LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap,.W.b Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE HICKSITE QUAKERS 
AND THEIR DOCTRINES 



9 



By JAMES M. DeGARMO, A.M., Ph.D. 




( iUL 8 1887 



NEW YORK 

Gbe Gbrtetian Xfterature Co, 

1897 



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Copyright, 1897, 
By THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CO. 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



To 

THE MEMORY OF 

MY NOBLE QUAKER FATHER 

AND 

MY SAINTED QUAKER MOTHER 

WHOSE PURE AND HOLY LIVES HAVE BEEN A 

PERPETUAL BENEDICTION TO 

THEIR CHILDREN 

Ubte little tDolume (s 2>et>fcate& 

BY THEIR GRATEFUL SON 



PREFACE. 



This Book is not intended to be in anj 
sense a history of the Hicksite Quakers. It 
originated in a Paper read by the author 
before Vassar Brothers' Institute in Pough- 
keepsie, some years ago, in reply to public 
utterances of a Clergyman against the 
Quakers, and the form of that address has 
been partly preserved, though it has been 
entirely rewritten and annotated. Its prep- 
aration has been rest and recreation for 'me 
in my busy life. It has proved a delightful 
task to pass in critical review the faith and 
practices with which I was familiar in my 
Boyhood and Youth ; and not only has it 
revived precious memories with which the 
past is peopled, but I am not unconscious 
that the prolonged studies and careful com- 



vi Preface. 

parisons into which this work has led me 
have resulted, for myself, in more definite 
and more comprehensive views of religious 
truth in general, and especially of those pri- 
mary and fundamental truths of Christian- 
ity, the Immanence of God in the Soul of 
Man, Man's immediate spiritual commun- 
ion with Him, and His revelation of Him- 
self in and through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
I am not disinclined to believe that upon 
these fundamental doctrines, with truly 
catholic liberty of interpretation, all Protes- 
tant Christians may yet join in a common 
worship, and the scattered fragments of the 
Church be re-united into the aggressive 
army of Truth and Progress. 

This Essay has been severely criticised 
for the use of the term " Quakers " instead 
of " Friends," the name they themselves 
prefer. It is urged that this is not their 
chosen designation, but that they were 
called " Quakers " in reproach. This is no 
doubt true, but what was intended as a re- 
proach, has become an honor ; what was 



Preface. vii 

fixed upon them as a stigma, has become 
a crown of glory. The world knows what 
we mean by " Quakers " ; the expression 
has passed into history, and for me and 
many another of their descendants it has 
associations that cannot easily be sacrificed. 
So I accept the censure, and retain the 
name as it was written. 

It will easily be noticed that I have used 
the past and present tenses almost inter- 
changeably. It was inevitable that this 
should be so. My intimate associations 
with the Quakers as a Society were in the 
past, in youth's Golden Days, but my ad- 
miration for their character, and my love for 
their blessed spirituality are living facts of 
the present. So I let the confusion of tenses 
stand, conscious that if it is not the best in 
a literary sense, it is at least the true reflec- 
tion of my own mind, and of the moods in 
which the work has been done. 

In addition to my own experiences 
among the Quakers, and to the authorita- 
tive Discipline of the Society, I am much 



viii Preface. 

indebted to two little Books for succinct 
resumes of Hicksite Quaker Doctrine. The 
one is " Essays on the views of Friends/' by 
John J. Cornell, " Approved by the Repre- 
sentative Committee of the Genesee Yearly 
Meeting," and published by the " Friends 
Publishing Association of Philadelphia." 
The other is " Sermons by Sunderland P. 
Gardner," delivered in Philadelphia in 1885. 
They are both valuable works, and are re- 
ferred to in the notes as " Essays " and 
" Sermons," without further qualifications. 
To the Rev. A. F. Olmsted, D.D., late 
Rector of the Church of the Messiah in 
Rhinebeck, I am under lasting obligations, 
not only for criticisms and suggestions, but 
for generous sympathy and encouragement 
in my effort to make a clear statement of 
Quaker opinions. With the foundation of 
all Quakerism, the belief in man's con- 
sciousness of God's immediate self-revela- 
tion to the human soul, he was in perfect 
accord, however he might dissent from 
other points of their doctrine. 



Preface. ix 

To my Students, ex-Students and 
Friends, whose generosity has made it 
possible for me to publish this book, I can 
only return sincerest thanks. The delicacy 
of the compliment thus paid me is appre- 
ciated, and adds one more to the many 
pleasant incidents of my life as a teacher. 

Finally, if this little work shall be instru- 
mental in spreading a better knowledge of 
the Faith and Character of the Church of 
my Childhood, or in showing to some 
minds among the Quakers their practical 
unity with the more active and prosperous 
Body of the Church of Christ, I shall feel all 
my labors repaid a hundred-fold. 




CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Hicksite Quakers. Their Decadence 13 

II. Their General Character ... 24 

III. Their Belief in God and in His Worship 44 

IV. Belief in Christ and Salvation . . 57 
V. The Bible, Inspiration, and Prayer . . 64 

VI. The Sacraments and the Ministry . . 81 

VII. Miracles, Immortality, and Evil ... 90 

VIII. They are Christians and Mystics . . 96 

IX. Some Further Considerations . . .106 

X. A Summary up 

XI. Where Shall They Go? . . . . 124 

XII. Conclusion ...... 135 



THE HICKSITE QUAKERS. 



CHAPTER I. 
•• The Hicksite Quakers. Their Decadence. 

The Quaker Society, or Religious Soci- 
ety of Friends, had its origin in England. 
While in that country it remained united 
and aggressive, on being transplanted to 
America, under conditions of greater free- 
dom, differences of opinion sprang up on 
fundamental points, as the nature of Christ, 
the Character of the Atonement, the Au- 
thority of the Bible, the Salvation by Christ, 
the necessity of a formal creed, and yet 
others of minor importance. The one side 
or party adopted the usual orthodox or 
evangelical views held by almost all of our 
Protestant Churches. The other side 
13 



14 The Hicksite Quakers. 

adopted what may be called, for the sake 
of distinction, more liberal views, as the 
Divinity but not the Deity of Christ, the 
Inspiration but not the Infallibility of the 
Bible, and they differed widely also in their 
interpretation of Salvation by Christ. These 
differences failed of reconciliation, as both 
parties claimed to find support for their 
views in the writings and opinions of earlier 
Friends, especially of George Fox, Robert 
Barclay, Thomas Ellwood, William Penn 
and others. Having no central authority 
to decide such issues, the divergence of 
views increased, till in 1827 a complete 
schism or separation took place, resulting 
in the establishment of two organizations, 
each claiming to be the legitimate body or 
Religious Society of Friends. The one ad- 
hering to evangelical standards was known 
as the " Orthodox Society of Friends." A 
prominent part on the liberal side was taken 
by a very able, eloquent and active preach- 
er, Elias Hicks, who, whether right or 
wrong in his opinions, was evidently a man 



The Hicksite Quakers. 15 

of great power and influence. From his 
prominence in the Society the second party 
became known as the " Hicksite Society 
of Friends," though nothing was further 
from the mind of Elias Hicks than the idea 
of affixing his name to the body of religious 
views he advocated, and many of the So- 
ciety still repudiate the title. But history 
and use fix such marks of distinction often 
against the most vehement protests, and so 
this branch of the divided Society is known 
as Hicksite Quakers. Springing as it did 
out of a bitter controversy, and assailed as 
heretical and unsound by its sister Society, 
it is perhaps not strange that few people 
have ever been more persistently misun- 
derstood and misrepresented than the Soci- 
ety of Hicksite Quakers. Having no form- 
ulated Creed to be subscribed to as an in- 
dispensable condition of acceptance in the 
Fraternity, no set of test questions by which 
to try such as would become acknowledged 
Ministers of the Word, and exercising so 
large a toleration towards all varieties of 



1 6 The Hichsite Quakers. 

opinion, if held and announced with any 
moderation at all, and shrinking from any- 
thing like discussion, they have been dis- 
credited in many quarters as a religious or- 
ganization of very doubtful tendencies, and 
often openly assailed as perverters of Chris- 
tianity. In the days of Puritanism, when an 
error of thought was held to be as fatal as 
a sin actually committed, no other estimate 
of them was to be expected. But now, 
when the leaven of Christian Charity and 
Forbearance is so manifestly at work in 
every Denomination, when a larger tolera- 
tion is everywhere demanded, — when every 
Church includes such a variety of opinions 
within its fold, — and especially when the 
first notes are being sounded of that call for 
unity among Protestants which is yet to 
issue in some common worship, it would 
seem that the times are ripe for a more ju- 
dicial consideration of the true position of 
these Quakers. Moreover, to many the So- 
ciety is a thing of the past. Not many years 
ago, they were a strong organization, both 



The Hicksite Quakers. ij 

in numbers and influence, in many parts of 
the country. Their " First Day " gather- 
ings were large, and able men and women 
took up their Ministry, and bore faithful 
testimony everywhere. Not only among 
their own people, but often among those 
of no Church affiliation whatever, these 
Ministers were welcomed and gladly heard. 
Their zeal often overleaped the limits of 
their local work, and led them to bear the 
Banner of the Preached Word to distant 
parts, in great humility of Spirit, yet, too, 
in strains of exulting triumph over sin and 
death. Taking no pay for their services, 
but freely giving of the grace they had re- 
ceived, they remind one, not infrequently, 
of the Apostles of old, preaching Christ as 
the panacea of all mortal ills. Their plain, 
economic habits accorded well with the 
earlier condition of our busy people, and 
their simple service asked but little outlay 
on the externals, but slight expense for the 
garments of religion. Their demands upon 
the intellect were not large, for they in- 

2 



1 8 The Hicksite Quakers. 

dulged in no subtle abstractions, no elab- 
orate metaphysics of doctrine, and there 
was no active ill-will borne them, as they 
made no efforts to win proselytes from 
other folds. 

But a change has been slowly going on, 
and to the careful observer it is now plain 
that their Society has passed the period of 
its greatest activity, and has entered upon 
a period of decline. Where once it was 
strong, it may now have no organization at 
all. Many of its Meeting Houses are aban- 
doned, or opened only at funerals, and oth- 
ers have been pulled down or converted to 
other purposes. In Dutchess County alone 
several of its meetings have been given up, 
one or two others lead a merely nominal 
existence, and no one of the active meet- 
ings has a preacher of old-time readiness 
and eloquence. In some instances, perhaps 
in most, the decline in numbers and interest 
is certainly caused by the absence of any 
regular preaching. Friends themselves 
claim that the dearth of preachers is due 



The Hicksite Quakers. ig 

to unfaithfulness in heeding the monitions 
of the Inward Light. The spirit that ani- 
mated them once is failing among their de- 
scendants. 

In some parts of the United States I am 
told that the Society is on the increase, is 
adapting itself to the changing circum- 
stances of the times, discarding its stereo- 
typed forms, and is imbued with new life. 
But I think a careful census of its active 
membership will show here, as it does in 
England, a steady decrease, that points to 
ultimate extinction. Every sign is in that 
direction. The Quaker dress, once so com- 
mon, has almost disappeared from our 
streets, and the zeal of its Preachers drives 
them less frequently out upon long and 
tedious journeys to bear their faith to 
weary, fainting hearts. So, too, its sweet 
and simple speech, which always seemed to 
me so divine, and yet so lovingly and in- 
tensely human, is giving place to the com- 
mon phrase of the world, and with it is fad- 
ing out one of the most fascinating of 



20 The Hicksite Quakers. 

the visible characteristics of old-fashioned 
Quakerism. But above all other indications 
of decay, is the startling fact that the Young 
People, the descendants of Quakers, though 
born into all the rights and privileges of 
membership, are silently and often regret- 
fully withdrawing from the fold, and finding 
their spiritual homes in other denomina- 
tions. Some, too, have severed all connec- 
tion with the visible Church, and are drift- 
ing, without helm or purpose, on the shore- 
less seas of Agnosticism and denial. 

Thus we briefly indicate the apparent 
signs of dissolution, — not from violence 
without, — for it has suffered none in our 
day, — but from disintegration within, — by 
that natural process of decay inevitable to 
every organization whose work is done. 

It is natural and necessary that in its de- 
cline it should be made the subject of criti- 
cisms and questionings. On the one hand, 
men who have never known it in its palmy 
days, would honestly ask about its creed. 
" What do the Quakers believe ? " is not 



The Hicksite Quakers* 21 

an uncommon question where there is no 
longer a Quaker to answer. Or again, 
" Are the Quakers really a Christian Soci- 
ety ? " — and still further I have been asked 
in all sincerity, " Are they not a body of 
Infidels and Atheists ? " To such seekers 
after knowledge there should be plain an- 
swers given. But on the other hand, there 
are explicit charges made against them as 
false and malicious as can be concocted by 
bigotry, ignorance and self-conceit. For 
example, — not long since, at the funeral of 
a venerable and respected Quaker a cler- 
gyman of another denomination asserted 
that " This man had lived without God and 
without religion in the world," and inti- 
mated that this was true of Quakers as a 
class. It is such statements as this, whether 
originating in ignorance or malice, which 
demand some answer. If the Quakers 
merely refuse, as this man did, the minis- 
trations of a clergyman in the hour of 
death, it may only mean that they have no 
confidence in the holy office he claims to 



22 {The Hicksite Quakers. 

exercise. But if they do live " Without God 
and without religion " all their lives, then 
their pretence of being a religious body for 
the worship of God is a bit of masquerading 
which should be promptly uncovered. If 
they do not so live, these falsehoods about 
them should be exposed, even though men 
in clerical garb become their self-consti- 
tuted Judges. 

Let no one suppose for a moment that I 
am an impartial and unbiassed advocate. I 
should be ashamed to be so. I love the 
Quakers, and I have known the serene con- 
secration of their faith, and the beauty of 
their lives, and the deep sincerity of their 
worship. Born into the arms of a Blessed 
Quaker Mother, — drinking Quakerism in 
the very milk that nursed me, — learning it 
from my Father's lips, and breathing it in 
all the air of my Childhood and Youth, I 
have known it intimately, and I owe it too 
deep a debt of love and gratitude to be in- 
different in its defense. However much I 
may lament its weaknesses, mine shall not 
be the hand to deal it one unkind blow. 



The [ Hicksite; v Quakers. 23 

Mine, rather the high privilege, from the 
bosom of another church, to speak in its 
defense, and to utter its truthful praises in 
this hour of its waning prestige. 

True enough, my maturer manhood has 
found rest and a home in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, — not because I found 
Quakerism all false, but because I found all 
its truths in the Church, and my soul's 
larger liberty in her more comprehensive 
inheritance of tradition, of ritual, of prayer 
and of sacred song, and her more pliant and 
expansive organization to meet the wants 
of a world that never pauses in its career of 
progress. But loyalty to the truth should 
be the motto of Episcopalian, Quaker or 
Presbyterian alike, and for that truth's sake 
I would write. 

But let it be distinctly understood that I 
speak of the Hicksite Quakers as an Organ- 
ization, and not of any who have discarded 
the fundamentals of all religion, and yet 
claim the name of Quakers. Such must 
speak for themselves, they have no advo- 
cate in me. 



CHAPTER II. 

Their General Character. 

It is as well, perhaps, that we should in- 
quire as to what has been the character of 
this suspected people, how they have borne 
themselves in the struggle for existence ? 
Whether their lives have shown that dis- 
solute tendency springing from a disregard 
of all religious obligations ? If they can 
stand the Scriptural test, " By their fruits 
ye shall know them," or as the Apostle has 
put it, " I will show you my faith by my 
works," then they may not be so dangerous 
after all ! Have their works been good or 
ill ? Certainly, in their relations with the 
world they have been an almost ideal peo- 
ple. Simple, gentle, sincere and kind-heart- 
ed, is the all but unanimous verdict. Have 

they not been uniformly good friends, 
24 






The Hicksite Quakers. 25 

obliging neighbors, and valuable citizens ? 
To whom have the distressed and sorrow- 
ing gone more freely for sympathy and 
comfort, than to these " Broad-Brims and 
Strait Coats " ? Who among all the de- 
nominations of Protestants has been more 
kindly tolerant of every man's opinion, 
more profoundly convinced of the Brother- 
hood of all men ? In business, the member 
who does not pay, or honestly strive to pay, 
his just debts, is an exception, a Subject to 
be labored with by his Brethren and to be 
visited with the penalties of the Discipline 
if he is obstinate in his non-compliance. 
The whole section of the Discipline on 
" Trade " is admirable, and breathes the 
very spirit of honor and of rectitude in deal- 
ing with failures and misfortunes among 
members. It shows, moreover, how exten- 
sively the society could and did interfere 
with the affairs of a brother in financial dis- 
tress. This interference could take on the 
form of wise counsel, of kind admonition 
and warning, or finally, if an objectionable 



26 The Hicksite Quakers. 

course was continued, of disowning from 
membership in the society. The Discipline 
likewise forbids the habitual use of intox- 
icants, as a beverage, the frequenting of 
taverns and all places of gaming or of triv- 
ial and questionable amusements. So too 
the Quakers have thrown the strongest 
safeguards around the marriage relation, 
and I have never yet known of an applica- 
tion for divorce from their members. It is 
worth noticing that the Puritans of New 
England shamefully persecuted the Quak- 
ers for their " dangerous heresies " of opin- 
ion, fining, imprisoning, robbing and whip- 
ping them pitilessly. But these same dan- 
gerous heretics have preserved the most 
sacred of all the relations of life, the mar- 
riage relation, with unswerving fidelity and 
christian spirit, while it is the acknowledged 
disgrace of the descendants of the Puritans 
that divorce is attainable among them not 
only for very insufficient reasons, but even 
without any reason at all, except the caprice 
of parties concerned. Dr. Leonard Bacon 



The Hicksite Quakers. 2y 

is authority for the most telling arraign- 
ment of his own New England on this 
question. The fruits of Puritanism com- 
pare badly in this respect with the course 
of the Quakers, so much distrusted for 
their opinions. 

Another characteristic of this people is 
the consideration shown to poorer mem- 
bers, — not such only as are objects of char- 
ity, but those also who, from comparative 
poverty, would naturally have little influ- 
ence in any organization. Their Society is 
a commonwealth without titles and with- 
out distinctions among the Brethren. They 
have no desirable pews for sale which the 
rich can buy over the poor, for their sit- 
tings are absolutely free. The privilege of 
the front or " facing " seats, though no- 
where recognized by written law in the so- 
ciety, is generally conceded to the older 
and more active members, who have seen 
long service in the interests of the meeting. 
But there, too, the richest and the poorest 
sit side by side without any mark of rank, 



28 The Hicksite Quakers. 

and many a time have I seen an old man 
sitting at the " Head of the meeting " who 
earned his bread by daily labor of a severe 
kind, while next to him sat one worth his 
thousands yearly. In their intercourse with 
one another special care was taken to make 
such members feel that they stood upon a 
perfect equality with all the rest, and that 
they held a goodly place in the affections of 
their more favored Brethren. Well do I 
remember that I once overheard two 
Friends exhorting each other to greater 
diligence in cheerful, comforting conversa- 
tion with a timid, hesitating Brother, who 
evidently feared that his poverty might not 
commend him to their good graces. At an- 
other time I heard an exhortation to visit 
such a member, and take a meal with him, 
to remove any undue humiliation he might 
feel from his poverty. These are little 
things, but they tend to show the kind of 
equality existing among the Quakers. We 
are accustomed to say that there is no high, 
no low, no rich, no poor in Christ, and the 



The Hicksite Quakers. 2g 

Spirit of our Blessed Master would make 
it so, but it still remains a fact that the rich- 
est men can and do hire the best pews in 
most Churches, and so we are seated to 
worship according to our wealth and influ- 
ence. I am not censuring the Church for 
this apparently unavoidable difficulty, I 
only say that the Quakers do not do it that 
way. Their Society is a religious republic, 
where men are on a common footing and 
can worship and give of their penury or 
their plenty as may be, and not be reminded 
of it by the location of their pew. 

A very attractive feature of the organiza- 
tion is its " Birthright Membership." Ev- 
ery child whose parents are Friends at the 
time of its birth, is by inheritance a child of 
the society, and at a suitable age is enrolled 
as an active member. If one parent only 
is a member, the child, with the consent of 
both parents, becomes a birthright member. 
Neither rite nor sign is needed to confirm 
its membership, but it assumes its place in 
the Church as naturally and as necessarily 



30 The Hicksite Quakers. 

as in the paternal home. From the earliest 
years of understanding, with its earliest 
thoughts, the child is made to feel itself in 
the fold of the Church of Christ, and to re- 
gard this as a sacred inheritance. It creates 
an atmosphere of fixedness, of certainty, 
and throws around the growing youth the 
most restraining and beneficial influences. 
Some other Churches seek the same result 
by means of infant baptism. Moreover, 
these Quakers have been, with all their 
plain ways, a sunny-faced, cheery people. 
It has seemed to be a kind of unwritten law 
among them to maintain a cheerful coun- 
tenance. " I remember their pleasant ways, 
and how glad I was to visit them when a 
boy, for it always made me happier," said 
an elderly man to me a short time since. 
They had what Matthew Arnold calls 
" Sweetness and light " in their composi- 
tion, and their faith disposes them that 
way. They dwell less than many others on 
the awful fact of retribution even in this 
world. Yet the bitterness and desolation 



The Hicksite Quakers. 31 

of spirit in which they often find themselves 
through some unfaithfulness to the Inner 
Light must be of itself a terrible retribu- 
tion. They may be at times reduced almost 
to despair by the withdrawal of the marks 
of Divine favor within them. John Wool- 
man, Elias Hicks, and every strong writer 
among them, record these periods of suffer- 
ing. But after all they prefer to dwell on 
the gentler and holier attributes of God, — 
his love, his mercy, his forgiving grace, his 
readiness to stir the depths of their souls, 
and this disposes their hearts to cheerful- 
ness, rather than gloom. They are not 
vaguely grasping at a far off Heaven, and 

"The golden pomegranates of Eden 
To quiet their fever and pain," 

but are in the enjoyment of immediate ac- 
ceptance with their Heavenly Father. They 
are thus eminently fitted to soothe and com- 
fort the sorrowing, and for works of charity 
and deeds of mercy. Their gentle ways were 
in themselves a benediction. Their sys- 



j?2 The Hicksite Quakers. 

tern of caring- for their own poor is a marvel 
of delicacy and tact, and is followed as a 
sacred duty. No honest Quaker in good 
standing need ever apply to the town for 
assistance, so scrupulously do they care for 
the needy among the Brethren. Again and 
again have I known the indigent and af- 
flicted to be assisted by comforting words 
and still more comforting provisions with 
the most exquisite consideration for the 
feelings of the sufferer, the strictest priv- 
acy being observed lest his self-respect be 
wounded before the world. Nor do they 
limit their ministrations to their own denom- 
ination, but relieve suffering everywhere, if 
their means allow. One characteristic of 
their charity has left an indelible impres- 
sion on my mind, — the firmness with which 
they insist on the able-bodied being self- 
sustaining. Their aid has always been stu- 
diously withheld if the needy one has the 
health and strength to earn his own living. 
They will give him an opportunity for work, 
but make no parley with indolence. It is 



The Hichsite Quakers. 33 

good Quaker doctrine that man shall earn 
his bread by the sweat of his brow, and so 
the constitutional drones shun the Quakers. 
Look over their people to-day, and show a 
more uniformly well-conditioned class if 
you can. Not miserly and stingy, but eco- 
nomical and thrifty ; good livers and plain 
dressers. Their plainness in dress is not en- 
tirely a matter of economy, but a protest 
against estimating man by the apparel in 
which he may be attired. 

So too the Quakers are a peaceful, law- 
abiding class, avoiding all unseemly wran- 
gling and disputation, and are bound by 
their Discipline to settle their differences 
without litigation. The principle and prac- 
tice of arbitration as advocated and applied 
by Friends so many years ago, are identical 
with the methods now rapidly gaining 
ground for settling the differences of capital 
and labor, and the disputes of nations. 
They were the forerunners in this applica- 
tion of mutual forbearance, voluntary com- 
promise and Christian love to the serious 



34 The Hichsite Quakers. 

difficulties between men, and were far in 
advance of their time. It seems to have 
prevailed among them more from the spirit 
of love and justice than from any special 
theorizing on the matter. Through the 
honest attention they gave to the spirit of 
their religion they reached conclusions 
which are still struggling for recognition 
even in the churches of our land. And as 
they settled their own personal differences 
by arbitration, so they pleaded with nations 
to arrange all international questions with- 
out bloodshed. They have always borne a 
strong testimony against war as unchris- 
tian, inhuman and debasing, advocating 
peace in the name of the Great Prince of 
Peace. " Their ways are ways of pleasant- 
ness, and all their paths are peace. ,, Some- 
times this opposition to war on principle led 
them into anomalous situations, as notably 
in the war with the South. They agitated 
for the abolition of slavery, yet were op- 
posed to the conflict which achieved that 
abolition. They always favored peaceful 



The Hicksite Quakers. 35 

emancipation, and could not be held re- 
sponsible for the evils done in retaliation 
for their advocacy of high principle. Yet 
the tide of patriotism swept many of the 
younger ones from their moorings of non- 
resistance, and they fought like heroes and 
died like martyrs for their country's life.* 
There is probably no feature of their prin- 
ciples that has been so sorely tried as this 
principle of peace, and it has sometimes put 
them into queer dilemmas. I once visited 
my Father of Blessed Memory, a staunch 
peace man, during the days of Grant's piti- 
less fighting in the Wilderness, when blood 
seemed in the very air. Naturally enough, 
the conversation turned upon the war, and 
on Grant's obstinate grip, — when Father, 
usually so self-possessed, rose nervously 

* In the circle of my own acquaintance, John and 
Edward Ketchum and Nehemiah Mann enlisted, and 
died in the defence of liberty. They were the sons 
of Quaker Parents, whose patriotic devotion overcame 
their scruples against war, and they sleep in Soldiers' 
graves. 



j?6 The Hicksite Quakers. 

from his chair, stepped rapidly to and fro 
across the room, and excitedly exclaimed : 
" Well, I hope Grant will whip the life out of 
the rebels ! " It seemed to restore the bal- 
ance, like a safety-valve, for he immediately 
resumed his seat, only adding by way of 
apology, — " It is all wrong though, this 
fighting, my Boy ! " " The Old Adam " 
had overcome his Quaker conviction and 
self-control for the moment, and his Boy 
took sides with Adam that time. 

This calm, serene self-control was an- 
other striking feature of the Quaker Char- 
acter. Charles Lamb in his " Imperfect 
Sympathies " speaks of " The admirable 
presence of mind which is notorious in 
Quakers upon all contingencies/' and of 
" The astonishing composure of this peo- 
ple." This did not spring from heartless- 
ness nor stoicism, but it was rather the 
spiritual conquest of passion, its subjuga- 
tion to the steadier and holier impulses of 
the soul. In truth, the main tendency of 
Quakerism was the subjection of all passion 



The Hicksite Quakers, 37 

to the dominion of the commanding voice 
of God within them, and the serenity of 
character, the composure and self-posses- 
sion under trying circumstances, was its 
legitimate result. 

No men have been more tenderly solic- 
itous for the oppressed than these Quakers. 
All through the long dark period when the 
conscience of the nation seemed stupefied, 
these people demanded the liberty of the 
slaves, and the cry of these heralds of free- 
dom was sounding through the land against 
the sin of human Slavery. When hundreds 
who did not hesitate to hurl the " Odium 
Theologicum" at them, were hunting slaves 
at the bidding of the South, these quiet 
Quakers were aiding the negroes in their 
flight towards freedom, and their homes 
were safe stations for the famous " Under- 
ground Railroad " of abolition days. 

They, too, were among the first to rec- 
ognize the claims of Woman to a perfect 
equality in the affairs of life. That exqui- 
site sense of justice which their introspec- 



j8 The Hicksite Quakers. 

tive and self-regulating habits cultivated 
revealed to them the truth that right was 
not the property or privilege of sex, any 
more than freedom inhered in color. They 
gave to their women a voice in the manage- 
ment of the meetings and struck from their 
marriage ceremony all unequal promises of 
service and obedience. The Quaker women 
were an active factor in reality, though a 
separate " Meeting for business " was cre- 
ated for them, instead of instituting one 
common business meeting for both men and 
women. But this Women's Meeting was 
and still is by no means an idle figure. It 
has frequently asserted itself vigorously, 
and under able leadership has antagonized 
the Men's Meeting and refused to agree 
with its decisions. The two bodies of co- 
ordinate rank and powers were a close ap- 
proach to absolute equality long before 
other branches of the church had made any 
move in that direction. But in the meet- 
ings for worship women were allowed 
a place of perfect equality in the ministry of 






The Hicksite Quakers. 39 

the word and in prayer. Some of the ablest 
ministers of the society have been women. 
In their educational schemes too, their 
Boys and Girls were put upon an equal 
footing of substantial work in School. All 
the frippery fashionably attached to the 
education of women was rigorously dis- 
carded, and real mental nutriment was of- 
fered her instead. Long before Vassar, or 
Smith, of Wellesley were inchoate schemes 
in the minds of their founders, these modest 
Quakers were giving their Daughters as 
good training as they gave their Sons. 
They thus recognized that mental equality 
of the Sexes which has been a distinctive 
feature of their Society, and towards which 
the rest of the world has been slowly strug- 
gling, through much hesitation of mind 
and tribulation of spirit. The result was a 
surprising development of mental qualities 
among Quakeresses. Many of the finest 
platform speakers among women have 
sprung from their Society. Their mental 
discipline, with the mysticism and repose of 



40 The Hicksite Quakers. 

their worship, has produced some of the 
best specimens of womanhood the world has 
ever seen. The whole Quaker habit is pe- 
culiarly adapted to the highest development 
of woman's nature. Their Quietism suits 
her, giving her the dignity of repose, and 
specially fits her for all the most sacred du- 
ties of life, duties which* she takes up as un- 
der the very eye of God. What wives and 
mothers they have made ! What homes they 
have gathered round them ! What a blessed 
and benign influence they have shed wher- 
ever they went ! There have been women 
among them on whose countenances the 
peace of Heaven seemed resting. Lamb 
notices in his " Quaker Meeting " the be- 
nign countenances of some of the members. 
" I have seen," he says, " faces in their as- 
semblies upon which the dove sat visibly 
brooding." Mrs. H. B. Stowe mentions 
this fact also, and others have spoken of it 
in a similar manner. It must have been a 
striking characteristic to attract so much at- 
tention. One woman among them attained 



The Hicksite Quakers. 41 

a national celebrity, a woman whose life was 
exposed to the public gaze, yet who carried 
her womanly gentleness like a shield about 
her into the thickest of the fray, — Lucretia 
Mott of Philadelphia. She was woman, 
prophet and saint in one; noble, gifted and 
motherly, one of the few the world will not 
forget. There has been many another no- 
ble woman among them whose presence 
was a benediction. The Quaker type of 
womanhood is a peculiar one, resembling 
in some features the type of the "Religious" 
among the Catholics, but differing from 
that in not renouncing the world, but in 
adapting itself to all the varied and trying 
duties of wife and mother, and sharing the 
temptations of the busy life of humanity, 
yet always gentle, strong, incorruptible, 
serene, intelligent and self-poised, while 
overflowing with all that is most womanly 
and affectionate. 

But among the men the effort for self- 
repression was a sterner one, and the issue 
of the conflict often more doubtful, — for 



42 The Hicksite Quakers. 

they came into more varied contact with the 
world, and its bitter struggle roused more 
of the lion or of the hypocrite in them. Yet 
there, too, the Quaker spirit conquered 
oftener than it was conquered. My own 
Father was naturally an imperious, quick- 
tempered man, yet no one ever heard him 
in angry altercation with another, or heard 
loud, boisterous words from his lips, — but 
I have seen strong men shrink before his 
quiet, withering speech when he was angry, 
as though they feared a bullet might pierce 
their hearts. He was Quaker through and 
through. 

This picture of the Quaker character is 
not an overdrawn one, — I believe it is faith- 
ful to the life. And surely the traits depicted 
here are just such as constitute the fruits of 
the highest Christian Faith. Would we not 
naturally expect the people who display 
such a character, to be devout, reverent, 
God-fearing and God-loving Souls ? Are 
not such spirits, by whatever name they may 
be called, the very flower and fruit of a holy 



The Hicksite Quakers* 43 

Christianity ? I do not believe anyone is 
prepared to concede that such divine results 
spring from Pantheism, Infidelity or Athe- 
ism. And if not, then we will be prepared 
to inquire more minutely into the Faith on 
which such a character is founded, and from 
which it draws its perennial inspiration. 




CHAPTER III. 

Their Belief in God and in His Worship. 

The foundation of all Quakerism is a be- 
lief in the existence of a personal, spiritual 
God and in His worship. Whatever else the 
Quaker is or is not, he is at the farthest re- 
move from Agnosticism, — he believes, pro- 
foundly, reverently, in the One Eternal God, 
the Creator, and Sustainer of all things, and 
he knows of God's presence in his own Soul. 
His faith does not make Him a far off, soli- 
tary God, seated in some Celestial City, 
watching from a distance the machinery of 
the Universe He has set in motion, but an 
Immanent Spirit, " Who is over all, and 
through all, and in all." And by this they 
do not mean that He is merely present in 
the All of things, but that He is potentially, 
really and actively present in every individ- 
44 



The Hichsite Quakers. 45 

ual soul. They further believe that He gives 
the humble and obedient heart manifest 
signs and tokens of his presence, — that they 
hear the very voice of God, speaking in- 
wardly, spiritually, and with authority to 
their minds and consciences. And not to 
them only, but to every human heart, come 
these Divine messages, if that heart will but 
hear them. And they believe, too, that men 
may prepare their spirits by humble waiting 
in silence upon God for the reception of 
such messages. In that silent introspection, 
they make unconditional surrender of their 
own wills and passions, and are made ten- 
derly susceptible of Divine impressions and 
inspirations. The more frequently the 
Spirit of man enters into this holy commun- 
ion with God, the keener become its suscep- 
tibilities, the easier the road to that sublim- 
est act of the soul. Some of the expressions 
used in reference to this are especially pe- 
culiar and suggestive. They say that their 
" hearts are made tender before the Lord," 
that he " opened many things " to them in 



46 The Hicksite Quakers. 

answer to their supplicating silence. This 
condition must, however, be observed, — 
there must be an absolute surrender of self 
and all its claims, — and " Thy Will, not 
mine, O Lord " must be the spiritual lan- 
guage of the heart. Such worship cannot be 
noisy and demonstrative. There must be 
nothing to turn the attention from the face 
of the Divine, — nothing to blunt its sensi- 
tiveness to the faintest touch of inspiration. 
Everything that can detract from perfect 
quiescence of mind and spirit must be re- 
moved. So ornaments of architecture, the 
beauties of color, and the melodies of sound, 
have no place in their services. And they 
are not omitted from accident or parsi- 
mony, but upon principle. The eye of sense 
must be closed to the exterior world, that 
the Divine illumination may be vouchsafed 
within. So they build no stately temples of 
worship, rear no holy altars, and chant no 
vespers. In plain, even barren rooms they 
gather, without sound of bell or summons 
of herald. One by one they drop into their 



The Hichsite Quakers. 47 

seats, without removing their hats, and the 
" service " begins in profound silence. But 
in that silence they are worshipping, — waiting 
in lowliest reverence and spiritual humility 
upon the Lord. They are not noisily telling 
him of their wants and wishes, but with 
souls uncovered towards Him, they wait for 
His Spiritual Power to manifest itself to 
their Spirits, convicting them of sin, hum- 
bling them before his perfect Holiness, 
quickening them to the perception of Divine 
Truth, and refreshing them with the con- 
sciousness of their unity with Infinite Love 
and Purity. To the uninitiated it seems 
quaint enough, that deep silence, — no 
psalm, no hymn, no invocation ; — at most 
an exposition of Truth or an exhortation 
from some worshipper who believes him- 
self or herself to be moved to bear a " Testi- 
mony " or breathe a prayer before the wait- 
ing congregation, — then the silence re- 
newed, — the hand-shaking that breaks up 
the common service, — some might feel like 
laughing at it all, but they would not, had 



48 The Hicksite Quakers. 

they lived within the circle of its chastening 
influence, and known the deep and awful 
sincerity of the Faith of these people in the 
Living God. Sometimes the whole hour of 
service would be spent in this waiting si- 
lence, and no word be uttered. No one feels 
moved to speak, and it would be scarcely 
less than blasphemy to speak without such 
moving in the heart. But such " Silent 
Meetings " as they themselves call them 
are by no means counted as lost occasions. 
For the truest and staunchest Friends they 
are often seasons of the richest spiritual 
fruitage ; — of great " Ingatherings " and 
" Refreshings." Often have they expressed 
their thankfulness for blessings dropped 
upon them in their " Silent Meetings," for 
the sweet communings they had experi- 
enced, and the inward grace and strength 
they had felt vouchsafed unto them there. 
They had felt their hearts covered with His 
overshadowing presence and brought into 
perfect submission to his will. And that is 
the Quaker ideal of Worship. To none is 



The Hicksite Quakers. 49 

the Eternal more vividly present than to 
him, and in this belief in the Spiritual God, 
actively present to his soul, is the key to the 
whole form of Worship, to the very life of 
Quakerism. They apply various terms to 
this Presence in their consciousness, calling 
it, "The Inner Light," *— " The Divine 
Word,"—" The Indwelling Logos,"—" The 
Witness of Truth," — " The Testimony of 
the Spirit," — but the meaning in all these 
expressions is the same, — it is the ever-pres- 
ent God, appealing to Man's Spirit, to his 
Love, to his Conscience, to all that is high- 
est in his being. That is the one tremen- 

* An admirable statement of the idea of the Inward 
Light is made in "The Quaker Invasion of Massachu- 
setts," by R. P. Hallowell, in these words: "God is 
an indwelling spirit and humanity is His holy tem- 
ple. His law is written upon the hearts of all men, and 
obedience to it will lead them into all truth, so far as 
religious truth is revealed to men. Through the oper- 
ation of this law the soul of man is accessible to his 
Creator. It is the rule of life to which every one must 
subject himself, and out of which duty is evolved." 
— Page 118. 
4 



f>o The Hicksite Quakers. 

dous fact which they never doubt, and 
which overshadows and belittles all other 
facts in comparison. That Presence is not 
confined to the Meeting House nor to its 
peculiar service. They believe they can 
commune with it in their daily toil, in their 
moments of solitude, and at times even in 
crowded thoroughfares. They believe this 
is a matter beyond all definition or demon- 
stration ; one of experience with every in- 
dividual soul, — an ultimate fact incapable 
of resolution, and beyond the province of 
logic, except as a premise to start from. 
Hence we find among them no elaborate 
demonstrations of the Being of God, and no 
attempt at a logical theory of Ontology or 
Theology. They prefer to assume as pri- 
mary and fundamental this truth, which 
they claim is directly certified to the human 
consciousness, and requires no proof. It is 
not an argument to convince, but a sum- 
mons to listen to the voice within, and know 
for yourself that God is. It is an appeal to 
Consciousness, before all else. 



The Hicksite Quakers. 5/ 

To many this appeal may seem revolu- 
tionary ; but if Protestantism is to stand at 
all, this will be the key to its position. Deny 
the validity of the appeal to Consciousness, 
and Authority alone remains, and the Ro- 
man Catholic Church has the only consist- 
ent, logical theory of Infallible authority. 
But once concede that the deliverances of 
Consciousness are valid as tests of truth, — 
that through it and by it God does speak to 
man's soul, inspiring, strengthening and 
guiding it, and an Authority is established 
which must supersede all others, for it is 
the very " Voice of God." For the soul to 
which it comes, it must be the final and su- 
preme law, for its impressions and impulses 
are fresh and vital from the depths of ever- 
lasting purity and holiness. This is Quaker 
Doctrine, — that Man's Consciousness or 
Spiritual Nature is the avenue down which 
come the mysterious inspirations of the Di- 
vine, — the organ whose keys are swept by 
the fingers of God, — whose true music is 
the melody of heaven, — and whose Author- 



5-2 The Hichsite Quakers. 

ity is superior to Bishops or Cardinals, to 
Church or Bible. The Church, the Sacred 
Scriptures, the utterance of prophet, poet or 
saint, may be and are helps to the soul 
struggling upwards toward the light, but 
the one Living Voice is audible within you, 
and you must hear its accents to certify you 
of your peace. Its solicitations to right- 
eousness are to be heeded, and its strength 
will become your stiength in your weak- 
ness, and its leadings will guide you over 
mountain and through valley, over the bogs 
and moors and fens of life, and never be- 
guile your trust to its ruin. Hour by hour 
it is pleading with us all, in tones thrilling 
with infinite tenderness, if we will only bring 
our wills into a condition of obedience to its 
admonitions. " Drink from this Living 
Fountain " is the Quaker call, for it alone 
giveth life ; and this is the " Light that 
lighteth every man that cometh into the 
world," 

" This light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the poet's dream," 



The Hichsite Quakers. 5? 

and which, though we heed it not, 

" Is yet the fountain light of all our day, 
Is yet the master light of all our seeing, 
. . . and has power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal silence." 

This belief is not a new one, the Quakers 
never claim it as such. It has been so from 
the creation ; — they refer all great religious 
movements and experiences to the action of 
the Immanent God, and so bind into one 
beautiful brotherhood the religious life of 
all times and of all peoples. That life 
varies in intensity and depth and purity as 
the spiritual eye of the race is more or 
less clearly recipient and interpretative 
through growth. Through the very gross- 
ness of their natures men are disqualified 
for a correct interpretation of these divine 
impressions. Their own wills may be set 
against all obedience, for they are not con- 
strained of necessity to listen to the voice 
within. Thus the Free Will of Man is a car- 



54 The Hicksite Quakers. 

dinal tenet of the Quakers, and here again 
their appeal is to Consciousness, not to any 
subtle argument. It is the direct " Argu- 
mentum ad hominem," — " Do you not 
know of yourself that you can turn from the 
evil and choose the good, or abandon your 
spirit to the sinful and perishing ? " In such 
liberty alone is moral responsibility possi- 
ble, and the consciousness of freedom is a 
fundamental faith with the Friends. 

But even unto the true disciple this in- 
spiring influence is not an uninterrupted 
one. Its hours are uncertain, for it, too, has 
its times and seasons, its mysterious flit- 
tings off and on, and its long reaches of 
abiding and refreshing calm, which mortals 
cannot explain. But its uncertainty is in no 
way attributable to changeableness in God, 
— only to Man's unfaithfulness to the lead- 
ings of the spirit. Hence it is sometimes a 
dim, far off, uncertain intimation of the 
truth, and again it is a clear indication which 
it were recreancy to deny. At others it is a 
flash of conviction, stunning and smiting as 



The Hicksite Quakers. 55 

it smote St. Paul, or again it seems the 
ripening of a pure soul, and bursts into the 
glad surprise of a revelation in the heart of 
a St. John. But it must not be inferred that 
this inspiration is necessarily accompanied 
by miraculous signs and wonders. In " Es- 
says " we find this statement : " This inspi- 
ration comes as naturally and as gently to us 
as does the light of the sun to illuminate the 
earth, and brings to the physical and intel- 
lectual faculties a knowledge of material 
things. ... Its voice is heard in an hour 
of silent meditation, or while busied with 
our lawful avocations, or amid our times of 
relaxation and pleasure " (pp. 34 and 35). 
They also claim the graces and virtues of 
humanity as the fruit of this inspiration of 
the spirit. Abundant proofs of this claim 
will be found in " Penn's Rise and Prog- 
ress," in Barclay, in Elias Hicks, et passim 
in their writings. 

But here a special distinction must be ob- 
served, necessary to guard against a com- 
mon misrepresentation of the Quakers. In 



56 The Hicksite Quakers. 

all its varied manifestations they never iden- 
tify nor confound this spiritual force with 
material force in a pantheistic sense. It is 
thought, it is love, it is righteousness, it is 
justice, it is perfect holiness, and these can 
be the attributes of nothing but a living 
Personality in which they inhere. Their 
phraseology points continually to this fact. 
They speak of God almost universally as 
" Our Heavenly Father," or in words of 
similar meaning, and never in terms that in- 
dicate pantheism. While the universe is 
filled with him, he is not the universe, but 
transcends and controls it. So they have 
kept themselves free from all thought of 
the physical embodiment of God in a mate- 
rial form. He can no more have such a 
figure than thought and love can have it. 
He dwells among them as a living spirit, 
and they will tolerate no representation 
thereof. They accept the fact without at- 
tempting its solution. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Their Belief in Christ, and Salvation. 

But the Hicksite Quakers are not trini- 
tarians, and do not, save in very rare in- 
stances, accept the orthodox theory of the 
three-fold nature of the Supreme God, — 
they do not believe that God the Father is 
one Person, Jesus the Son another Person, 
the Holy Ghost another Person, each God, 
and the Three together constituting in some 
mysterious way, only one God. Jesus him- 
self they regard as a mortal, a man, like 
unto other men, except that he kept himself, 
or was kept by the power of God which is 
the Christ, free from sin. They do not be- 
lieve that God was crucified upon Calvary, 
nor that Jesus' blood, in and of itself, had or 
has any peculiar efficacy in ransoming the 
world. But they do believe in Jesus as the 
57 



58 The Hicksite Quakers. 

Christ, the Anointed Son of God, the Savior, 
the Revelation of the Father. God was in 
Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. 
It was this presence of God in his fulness in 
the soul of Jesus that made him the unique 
Son of God, the revelation unto the world 
of the Eternal Good, but did not make him 
God. The Holy Ghost is to them one of the 
manifestations of the Supreme, and God in 
the heart of Man, God as revealed through 
Jesus Christ, and God as manifested in the 
operations of the Holy Spirit, are all one 
and the same Supreme. All men may be- 
come Sons of God, but Jesus was the unique 
Son of God, because his will was complete 
in its submission to the Will of the Father, 
and the Spirit of the Father dwelt in him in 
its fulness. He could save men from their 
sins, by leading them away from sin and 
into perfect unity with God. So unto them 
he is the Dear Master, The Savior, The Son 
of Man, The Son of God, The Reconcilia- 
tion unto Salvation. They do not offer him 
worship as Deity, but they do confess him 



The Hicksite Quakers. 59 

as the " Light that lighteth every man that 
cometh into the world." They offer no ex- 
planation of how God was in Christ so per- 
fectly, nor do they presume to tell where 
the human ceases and the Divine begins in 
Jesus nor in their own souls. Their own 
natures are a profound mystery to them. 
Conscious of certain powers of their own, 
they are equally conscious of the Infinite 
background of possibilities in which their 
being rests. If our common human nature 
lies open to the inspiration of the Divine, 
how much more so the transcendingly pure 
and holy nature of Jesus, in whom the finite 
and the infinite coalesced in perfect unison. 
In that perfect union of the human and the 
divine lies the unapproachable mystery of 
the Savior's nature. It is still more clearly 
put in another extract from " Friends' In- 
telligencer and Journal " of January 4, 1890. 
" We believe in the divinity of Christ as 
well as the humanity of Jesus. It was not 
the manhood alone that constituted the Son 
of God, but Christ in Jesus, — or the spirit 



60 The Hicksite Quakers. 

in the flesh, or God in man. Thus God was 
manifested in the flesh in Jesus, ' And we 
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth.' " 

As they keep close to the language of 
Scripture in speaking of Christ, so also do 
they in speaking of his mission upon Earth. 
They accept none of the mechanical theo- 
ries of his atoning work. They do not be- 
lieve he died to ransom humanity from the 
effects of Adam's sin, nor to appease an of- 
fended God, nor to balance the scales of an 
impartial and unswerving justice. The idea 
that Christ's sacrifice had in it anything of 
expiation in the sense of penalty for past 
sins, or of substituting the innocent Lord as 
the criminal in the place of guilty men, to 
satisfy the absolute justice of God, is ut- 
terly foreign to the Quaker mind. To them 
God's mercy is not so straitened by his jus- 
tice that the latter must be satisfied before 
the former can have full sway in winning 
Man to the Father. Moreover, right and 



The Hicksite Quakers. 61 

justice are of no different nature in the Di- 
vine mind and in the human, and as an 
earthly court would outrage every sense of 
Justice by substituting an innocent person 
on the gallows for the murderer who has 
gone free, so would the High Court of 
Heaven fly in the face of every sense of right 
by exacting the death of the innocent Son of 
God as an expiation for the accumulated 
sins of humanity. The vicarious sacrifice, 
in the sense of substitution, found no sup- 
porters or at least very few among the Hick- 
site Quakers. But none the less they posi- 
tively affirm that there is no salvation save 
in Christ. In Job Scott's " Salvation by 
Christ " occur these words : — " I am as 
sure there is no salvation out of Christ, as 
I am of anything in the world." But the 
question lies in what constitutes salvation. 
Thoughtful Quakers hold definite opinions 
on this point, for they recognize the fact 
that man's material or animal nature is in- 
different or averse to the holy life of God, 
and incapable of attaining it without the 



62 The Hicksite Quakers. 

help of his Spirit. That Spirit has been 
working in all ages past, but supremely in 
Christ, revealing itself as it could in har- 
mony with the freedom of man's will. Man 
cannot forcibly be converted to holiness, 
but must be freely enlightened and as freely 
brought to a knowledge of God — to obe- 
dience unto him and communion with him 
as the only source of light and peace. Jesus 
came in the Spirit to reveal God to man, and 
so to reconcile man to God, in the truest 
scriptural sense. By this revelation of God's 
love and mercy to his children, as well as by 
his own spirit of self-sacrifice and tender- 
ness, he wins the heart of man from the life 
of the flesh to the life of the spirit, which is 
the inheritance of the Children of God. In 
thus bringing man to communion with the 
Father, he becomes his savior, he lifts the 
burden of his sins, and transplants him from 
strife and suffering into the kingdom of 
purity and peace, which is the Holy City, 
the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse. 
Thus was given unto man the gift of Life 



TJie Hichsite Quakers. 63 

Eternal, in its true meaning. Ever and 
again do we hear the Savior's words from 
Quaker lips, — " And this is Life Eternal, 
that they might know Thee the only true 
God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast 
sent." And as that knowledge is attainable 
now, so that life eternal may be entered 
upon in spirit here on earth. The Quaker 
faith is not deemed essential to escape a 
future perdition, but to aid a faithful hum- 
ble striving after the Divine Life here and 
now. Its salvation is not a saving from a 
material hell, but from a life of sin, of un- 
cleanness, of corruption, and of carnal pleas- 
ures, into a life of pure living, holy thinking 
and saintly aspiration. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Bible, Inspiration and Prayer. 

In their utterances on religious subjects 
the Hicksite Friends use freely the lan- 
guage of the Bible, and draw their illustra- 
tions largely from it. They prefer to call it 
" The Scriptures of Truth." Again and 
again have I known them to retreat to its 
expressions as to an impregnable fortress 
in controversy, while they do not adhere to 
its literal meaning in their interpretations.* 

* It is certainly singular that a people who are so 
very free in their spiritual interpretations of Scripture 
should adhere to the " Ipsissima verba," the very literal 
meaning, in the matter of oaths. They are strictly for- 
bidden to take an oath, and the prohibition is based on 
the positive command of Jesus, " Swear not at all, etc." 
But why should they interpret this literally, and not 
also that equally positive command, " Take, therefore, 
no thought of the morrow, etc.," with reference to 
64 



The Hicksite Quakers. 65 

If asked to define their idea of God, they 
will probably answer ; — " God is a Spirit, 
and he who would worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth." If asked 
if Jesus was " Very God of very God, of one 
substance with the Father," they will reply, 
— Jesus is " The Sent of the Father," — "The 
Good Shepherd," — " The Divine Light," — 
" The Prince of Peace," — language strictly 
scriptural, and quite as apt as any definitions 
of the Catechism. When urged to say what 
he thought of heaven, an old Friend answer- 
ed me, — " Behold, the kingdom of heaven 
is within thee." It is a favorite expression 
of many preachers among them that " The 
kindom of heaven cometh not with observa- 
tion," as confirming their faith in its purely 
spiritual nature. Many of them are diligent 
readers of the Bible, and their Discipline 
exhorts them to careful study thereof. 

worldly foresight? For they are very prudent and 
prosperous people, caring zealously for the morrow's 
provision. Yet a complete consistency of opinion can 
hardly be expected. 
5 



66 The Hicksite Quakers. 

Some of them love especially the grand 
and majestic language of Isaiah, and fairly 
revel in its inspiring strains. The only time 
I ever distinctly remember to have heard 
Rachel Barker, a Quaker Preacher of 
Poughkeepsie, was one " First Day " morn- 
ing in the little white meeting house in La- 
fayette Place. There had been an unusually 
prolonged silence, when she rose, and in her 
full, strong voice burst into Isaiah's words : 
" Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm 
of the Lord ; awake, as in the ancient days, 
in the generations of old," and followed 
them with a fervent invocation and a sum- 
mons to her hearers to " Come home " to 
the judgment of the Living Voice in their 
own hearts, that sounded like the trumpet 
peal of a Messenger of God. 

At another time, one winter's evening, 
during the thrilling experiences of old Anti- 
Slavery times, Lucretia Mott and some 
prominent Friends sat by the fireside of a 
humble farmer's family near Poughkeep- 
sie. The conversation had run long on the 



The Hichsite Quakers. 6y 

sufferings of the slaves, which she had pict- 
ured so vividly before their eyes as to enlist 
the sympathies of all, when a deep silence 
suddenly fell upon the room. For a few sec- 
onds she sat with bowed head and folded 
hands, as in deep meditation. Then slowly 
raising her head, and clasping her hands 
more closely, in a voice soft and musical as 
only her voice could be, she said with meas- 
ured utterance : 

" O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, 
and not comforted, behold I will lay thy 
stones with fair colors, and lay thy founda- 
tions with sapphires. And I will make thy 
windows of agates, and thy gates of carbun- 
cles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones. 

" And all thy children shall be taught of 
the Lord, and great shall be the peace of thy 
children." 

Then, turning to her host, she added ; 
" There is comfort in it, Peter." And Peter 
answered, " Yes, Lucretia, the Comforter 
will come." And again the silence fell upon 
them, and the incident struck deep into the 



68 The Hicksite Quakers. 

soul of one listening Boy, who here narrates 
an experience of his own Quaker home, the 
memory of which comes like a fast-reced- 
ing voice on the still air of contemplation. 

But with all this fondness for Scripture 
and familarity with it for quotation, there 
is no devotion to the letter thereof. " The 
letter killeth, the spirit giveth life." For 
the Hicksite Quaker the Bible, like every- 
thing else, must be freely brought to the 
test of the Inward Light, and a truth de- 
rives no additional authority from being 
found within its covers. Its authority lies 
not at all in its inerrancy, nor in the authen- 
ticity of its various books in point of au- 
thorship, nor in its infallible teachings. It 
is a precious Book/ and a source of inesti- 
mable comfort and strength, because it is a 
record, correct in the main, of God's deal- 
ings with his people in other times, and so 
becomes corroborative of the Living Wit- 
ness in their own hearts. It contains the 
" Word of God " as given to holy men and 
interpreted by them, but not every word of 



The Hicksite Quakers. 6g 

the Bible is the " Word of God," nor is it 
their " Only rule and guide for faith and 
practice." They reject the equivalent ideas 
of plenary inspiration and infallible author- 
ity, maintaining that much of it is clearly 
human and in no way binding on the con- 
sciences of men. But it must not be in- 
ferred that the Quakers reject entirely the 
doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible. On 
the other hand they emphatically affirm that 
holy men were inspired then and in other 
ages too, and from the heights of that in- 
spiration wrote for all time and for all classes 
of people, bearing faithful witness to the 
truth revealed unto them by the Spirit of 
God. The eternal nature of that truth is 
certified by the same Holy Spirit in the 
hearts of men now, and so God's revelation 
is made authoritative. If it is urged against 
this view that revelation becomes an indi- 
vidual matter, the Quaker's ready reply is 
that it was so in the case of the Bible writers 
themselves, has been so and is so even yet. 
That inspiration does not involve the infalli- 



jo The Hicksite Quakers. 

bility of the individual inspired as a teacher, 
is likewise maintained, and they point to the 
fact that the authors of the various books of 
the Bible nowhere claim to write without 
possibility of error. Even if they did so 
write, to maintain that impossibility of error 
would involve an infallible translator, an in- 
fallible transcriber, and an infallible in- 
terpreter, and the issue would be the estab- 
lishment of a hierarchy of interpretation not 
inferior in its pretensions to the claims of 
the Priestly Hierarchy of the Church of 
Rome. It is thus for its spiritual content 
that the Bible is prized by the Quakers, and 
not for its authoritative issuance directly 
from the hand of God. None the less is it 
held in sincerest reverence as the great de- 
pository of faith through the ages, though 
not the final nor the only one. Its inestima- 
ble value lies in its witness to the truth and 
in its testimony to the Christ, and all Mem- 
bers are advised in their Discipline to in- 
struct their children " That the same 
blessed experience of the word of sanctifica- 



The Hicksite Quakers. yi 

tion through the operation of the Spirit of 
Truth, to which they (the Scriptures) clearly 
bear testimony is to be witnessed now, as in 
former ages, by all who attend to its mani- 
festations." " Search the Scriptures for in 
them ye think ye have eternal life, and they 
are they which testify of me." They thus 
refuse to acknowledge the Bible as author- 
ity over the souls of men. If God inspired 
its writers, so will he give us inspirations 
suited to our needs, as he gave to them. 
Whatever Moses or David or Paul experi- 
enced in his communion with the Most 
High, was imperative law for him, but the 
record of that experience cannot supersede 
the overshadowing presence of God's Spirit 
with our spirits, nor stifle the voice with 
which he persuades us of righteousness and 
truth. Thus the Bible is strength and com- 
fort and confirmation in the faith, but it rs 
not itself the fountain nor the all-sufficient 
source of truth. That fountain is the Eter- 
nal Father, the Immanent God, and no 
other. So positive is their teaching on this 



72 The Hichsite Quakers. 

point, that it will be better to let their own 
words speak for them in the matter, as they 
will thus define their own position in rela- 
tion to the Bible. 

In " Essays " are found extracts concern- 
ing the Bible which are very clear in mean- 
ing. On page 73 is this; " I would ever keep 
its teachings secondary, and only corrobora- 
tive of the immediate inspiration of the In- 
ner Light." And again on page 71 ; " The 
Scriptures possess a deep intrinsic value as 
a corroborative evidence of what is imme- 
diately revealed to the Soul of Man." And 
a true reverence and humility are exhibited 
in this little extract from " Essays " ; "I 
would then be understood to be a believer 
in all the truths contained in the Bible so far 
as I understand them, while I would not be 
understood as disbelieving those that I do 
not understand, for much that seems mys- 
terious and incomprehensible now, may yet 
be unfolded in the future, as much has been 
in the past." Likewise in " Sermons " we 
find these utterances, page 32 ; " We must 



The Hicksite {juakers. 73 

go beyond the Scriptures, and become ac- 
quainted with that which was before them, ,, 
namely, God ! On page 33 we have ; " See 
how clear these Scriptures are ; they need 
no further proof than that they corroborate 
the Divine Truth as it is revealed in our 
own souls. " And again on page 18 we find ; 
" There is a great deal that is very valua- 
ble in the Scriptures, and that may be a great 
encouragement to us, but we must go to 
that source and foundation which existed 
before the Scriptures were written, and that 
is our heavenly Father ; and his word still 
continues to be for our instruction." These 
sentiments were universal among Hicksite 
Friends. Nay more, they were the senti- 
ments of Quakers long before they were 
divided into Hicksite and Orthodox, for 
Barclay, in his celebrated " Apology/' says 
that the Scriptures " May be esteemed a 
secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, 
from which they have all their excellency 
and certainty ; for as by the inward tes- 
timony of the Spirit do we alone truly know 



74 The Hicksite Quakers. 

them, so they testify that the Spirit is that 
Guide by which the Saints are led into all 
truth ; therefore, according to the Script- 
ures the Spirit is the first and principal 
leader." 

Still further evidence on this point is the 
following extract from the " Friends' In- 
telligencer and Journal," Jan. 4, 1890, being 
a reprint from the same paper of Oct. 14, 
1865. 

" We are told in Scripture, ' In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God. The 
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, 
and we beheld his glory as of the only be- 
gotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth." This is what we recognize as the 
Word of God, — even the power of God un- 
created, and the Scriptures are the fruit of 
this power. They are the words of God. 
They were created by this Word that was in 
the beginning. Hence we cannot recognize 
them as the Word of God, for they were 
created, and the Word of God never was 



The Hicksite Quakers. 75 

created, but was in the beginning with God, 
and was God. 

These extracts serve to put their estimate 
of the Bible in its true light. Holding such 
opinions, they have been undisturbed by all 
the difficulties about the Authorship of the 
books of the Bible, or its vindication from 
errors of fact as charged by men like Bishop 
Colenzo. And the struggle now going on 
over the so-called " Higher Criticism " has 
no interest for a people who look to the im- 
mediate inspiration of God himself as the 
fountain of all spiritual knowledge. 

For in their estimate of it, no errors of 
translators or transcribers, nor errors of 
numbers nor yet of scientific statement, 
could in the least detract from its value as a 
witness to the truth of God. Whether the ac- 
count of creation in Genesis is chronologic- 
ally correct or not, God was, " In the begin- 
ning " still the origin of all things. And in 
like manner the truth of Christ's revelation 
of the Father remains unaltered, whatever 
may be the disagreements of the writers on 



y6 The Hichsite Quakers. 

minor points of fact. It will thus be seen? 
that their faith in Christian Truth and Love 
and Practice is above and independent of all 
destructive or constructive criticism. The 
value of the Scriptures, -for them, can never 
be diminished by any errors in the text of 
the sacred writings, for the text has no part 
in making the truth. It is the spirit of the 
Scriptures, not its infallibility, which they 
prize. And as a natural result of this indif- 
ference to the exact agreement of the Gos- 
pels may be traced in large part, the fact 
that they have produced no great names in 
Biblical research, though diligent readers of 
the New Testament in particular. For the 
same reason they have given little heed to- 
verbal exegesis, and have taken no part in 
the various textual discussions of other de- 
nominations. 

With such ideas of God, of silent worship,, 
of Christ, and of the Bible, it is plain the 
Quakers must be a devout and prayerful 
people. But to public prayer, in assemblies, 
they attach but little importance. They hold 



The Hicksite Quakere. 77 

that the permanent attitude of the devout 
soul is one of prayer, — of reverent, expect- 
ant waiting on the Spirit of the Lord. The 
uttered petition does not constitute prayer 
at all, though genuine prayer, through the 
movings of the Holy Spirit, may issue in 
spoken petitions. It is the submissive long- 
ing of the heart, feeling in utter self-abase- 
ment a thirst after the Righteousness of 
God, — a perfect sense of obedience to the 
voice within, whispering in mysterious ways 
the persuasions of duty, and the peace of as- 
sured acceptance. And their answer to 
prayer is a purely spiritual one. It comes in 
the conscious illlumination of the soul, — in 
clearer perceptions of duty, — in a deeper 
and more abiding assurance of peace in 
God's love, — sometimes it conies in quick- 
ened intellectual perceptions, and a deeper 
insight into the meanings of events. The 
depth and power of Scripture are often 
" opened " to them in response to this 
prayerful attitude of the soul. Sudden im- 
pressions, flashed upon them in this mood, 



y8 The Hicksite Quakers. 

will change the direction of a contemplated 
journey, and stay or hasten the utterance of 
some " testimony " against a popular evil. 
To " Pray without ceasing " is the very at- 
mosphere of Quakerism. 

Thus their faith in God, in Christ, in 
Prayer, is more an element of their very be- 
ing than an imposition from without. Their 
religion is wrought into the very fiber of 
their daily life. No people I have ever 
known have been more thoroughly satur- 
ated with their religious convictions than the 
Quakers are, none have struggled more 
resolutely to realize their religion every 
moment. They strive to make their faith a 
living reality, — to feel their prayer, and to 
know its multitudinous answer, written by 
the finger of God on the tablets of the heart, 
though they find ever renewed the truth 
that, 

" Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
Of the unspoken." 

But these people talk very little about 
their religion, and discourage all noisy 



The Hicksite Quakers. yg 

demonstrations. They are not " Garrulous 
of their dealings with God," and frown upon 
noisy revivals and seasons of religious ex- 
citement, as obstacles to the more quiet and 
enduring work of the Spirit. Very vividly 
do I remember how, in a time of great re- 
ligious feverishness, a dear Friend and 
neighbor approached my father with the 
blunt but well-meant question, — " Have 
you ever got religion, Peter ? " "What did 
thee say ? " was the surprised reply. "Have 
you ever got religion ? " " Not much, not 
much," was the quiet answer, " but my 
peace was made long ago, — my Father and 
I are at one, — I have no need of thee," and 
with a dignified wave of the hand he dis- 
missed the intruder, then closed the gate by 
which they had stood, and turning away 
left his questioner to meditate on the com- 
plete confidence of the Quaker who had 
never "got religion " in his peculiar way. 
But in their private gatherings by their 
own firesides, when no curious outsiders 
were present, they have often narrated their 



So The Hicksite Quakers. 

rich spiritual experiences, and spoken of 
their seasons of blessed communion and 
peace. They comfort, strengthen and en- 
courage one another at such times, though 
they rarely gratify curiosity by unveiling 
the Holy of Holies within them to the gaze 
of the uninitiated. There is something com- 
mendable in this reticence before " the 
world's people " about their own spiritual 
experiences, as though they constituted a 
sacred precinct of life, the very ground of 
its blessed beauty and harmony, too hal- 
lowed for vulgar criticism, and each mem- 
ber became as a string of a delicate harp, 
while from the whole, attuned in perfect 
unison, burst forth that music which is di- 
vine. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Sacraments and the Ministry. 

There is nothing in the society of Friends 
more unique than their theories of Baptism 
and of the Christian Ministry. They allow 
no baptism but the baptism of the Spirit, 
and require none either for admission to 
membership or the Ministry. They hold 
that the baptism of water has been super- 
seded, and that John the Baptist foretold 
its discontinuance when he said ; " I in- 
deed baptize you with water unto repent- 
ance, but He that cometh after me is 
mightier than I, . . . He shall baptize 
you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. ,, 
John's baptism was the forerunner and the 
symbol of the baptism of the Spirit, which 
they say, is " The true, real and only effect- 
ive baptism that could purify and cleanse 
6 81 



82 The Hicksite Quakers. 

the man from all the pollutions of sin." 
(" Essays," page jj, et passim.) They thus 
abolished the outward sign and retained 
only its inward significance. 

So too they had no rite of confirmation 
and no creed nor confession of faith to be 
subscribed, — nothing but the seal of God 
on their own hearts. They did not need the 
visible bread and wine of the sacramental 
feast to call to their remembrance the 
Blessed Lord, on whose spiritual body and 
blood they hourly fed, and so their Ministry 
was not a body of men set apart for the per- 
formance of these rites, nor with any 
priestly functions whatever. They had not 
even a ceremony of ordination, or setting 
apart, only an approval by a meeting of 
Ministers and Elders, and a recommenda- 
tion by them, under the firm belief that the 
only consecration for the Ministry of the 
Word must be accomplished by the imme- 
diate influence and teaching of the Holy 
Spirit. The following extracts from " Es- 
says " will best show their position: 



The Hicksite Quakers. 83 

" The preparation requisite . . . is an 
entire submission of the will of the man to 
the Divine Will ; a keeping the spiritual 
ear open to the instructions received 
through the revelations of immediate inspi- 
ration ; a passive learning the lessons that 
each day's revelations bring, and a patient 
waiting for the divine command to enter the 
work, without anxiety as to the where, the 
how, or the manner in which he will require 
us to labor " (pp. 26 and 29). The Minister 
must thus feel himself moved to bear testi- 
mony to the Grace of God, and must prove 
his calling by the edification and strength- 
ening of the Brethren. No intellectual tests 
are imposed, no Course in College or Semi- 
nary is required. The worthlessness of in- 
tellectual and literary qualifications alone is 
affirmed as follows ; " Without this inspira- 
tion, no matter how sound the doctrine, how 
well arranged the words, or how eloquently 
spoken, it does not reach the heart ; it only 
pleases the human ear for the time, and 
proves of no lasting benefit, neither tending 



84 The Hicksite Quakers. 

to encourage the halting or desponding, nor 
to discourage the selfish, the high-minded, 
or the callous and indifferent from pursuing 
their improper course of life " (pp. 26 and 
29). They further think that he who is to 
bear the Word in his ministry will be given 
what he shall say, and has no need of fore- 
thought or preparation. It is a remarka- 
ble fact that the Preacher sometimes feels 
impelled to speak by the urgency of the 
Spirit within, in spite of his own wish to be 
silent. John Woolman says that he " Fre- 
quently felt a necessity to stand up, when the 
spring of the ministry was low." He was 
" Reluctant to say too much," but was im- 
pelled onward by what he believed to be the 
Divine Presence and Power. It is not an 
uncommon thing to hear preachers say that 
their own preference is to be silent, but the 
Will of God is manifested unto them, and 
they must bear its testimony. In " Ser- 
mons," page 53, is this statement, a com- 
mon one for preachers ; " I have spoken that 
which has come before me, not one word of 



The Hicksite Quakers. 85 

which I had when I sat down." For this 
ministry no amount of scholastic training 
availed anything, — God's consecrating hand 
laid upon his soul alone can open the way to 
its profitable exercise, and this is in strict 
harmony with their views of God's imma- 
nence. But the further corollary of this is 
that as he receives his precious gift without 
money and without price from God, he must 
so impart of its blessings without pay of any 
kind. No genuine Hicksite Quaker Minister 
can accept a salary in any shape. They have 
always borne an unswerving testimony 
against a - Hireling Ministry, as directly 
opposed to the Spirit in which Jesus and his 
apostles labored for the advancement of his 
kingdom upon earth. This position no 
doubt involves a literalness of meaning that 
proves too much even for the Quakers, for 
Christ had not where to lay his head ; " no 
wife, no home, no abiding place for his 
weary body. If the Quaker Minister would 
imitate his Blessed Master so literally in all 
things, he too, must take up the burden of 



86 The Hicksite Quakers. 

his houseless and homeless ministry, and 
go as did the Christ from place to place as 
the Spirit called him, trusting to the Provi- 
dence of God to feed and clothe, and sus- 
tain him in his task. Yet few things would 
be more utterly foreign to the practical 
habits of the thrifty Quakers. Their minis- 
try is open to any who may feel called to 
participate therein, and can satisfy their 
meeting that they possess the necessary 
anointing of the spirit, and give evidence 
that they have been with Christ in holy 
places. 

This absence of all intellectual and liter- 
ary qualifications no doubt made the de- 
liverances of most of their Preachers too 
commonplace and monotonous, with too 
little of that variety which is necessary even 
in the most spiritual of " Conferences." 
Many mistook their own inclinations for the 
promptings of God, and failed in the edifi- 
cation of the Brethren, merely repeating 
with ceaseless iteration scriptural passages 
whose meaning they ignorantly wrested 



The Hicksite Quakers. 8y 

from their true import. Yet of what minis- 
try cannot the same thing be said ? How 
many of our educated Clergy fall far short 
of the mark of the ideal preacher must be 
manifest to any patient listener to the aver- 
age pulpit utterances. But with the Quak- 
ers this difficulty was increased by their pe- 
culiar tenets. Men who earn their bread by 
manual labor, as most Quakers do, can 
scarcely be expected to attain much refine- 
ment or elegant persuasiveness of speech. 
And yet they have produced preachers of 
rare and winning power, who have delivered 
their messages of "Peace on earth, and 
Good Will to men " with great acceptance. 
I have often been struck by the magnificent 
flights of fancy, the grandeur of imagination 
and the striking figures of speech which 
characterize the utterances of some of their 
ablest Ministers. The highly poetic nature 
of Quaker mysticism is often reflected in 
their quaint but effective sermons, and di- 
rect and powerful appeals to special duties 
have often come from their lips. 



88 The Hichsite Quakers. 

Then, too, they have kept their Ministry 
quite as free from current agnosticism and 
scepticism as any denomination. In the 
great freedom allowed by them, preachers 
have arisen who sought to be the propa- 
gators of doubt, unbelief, and sometimes 
even of atheism, and who have tried to main- 
tain their right to deliver such testimony in 
the public meetings for worship. But these 
apostles of materialism have been invaria- 
bly discountenanced and silenced by their 
Society, or finally disowned altogether, 
when they refused to recognize their want 
of unity with the fundamentals of Quaker- 
ism. In this way they have tried to main- 
tain the integrity and strictly religious char- 
acter of their acknowledged Ministry, while 
still permitting a very generous liberty of 
expression to all parties. They always in- 
sisted on moderation in their utterances, 
and sometimes opinions with which they 
felt no unity, but which were uttered with 
modesty and evident seeking for clearer 
light, were left unrebuked, and with kind 



The Hicksite Quakers. 89 

commendations to the Supreme Voice of 
God in the heart. Hesitation they could 
tolerate, denial not at all. Their Ministry 
was devoutly Christian, or nothing. 




CHAPTER VII. 

Miracles, Immortality, and Evil. 

It will thus be seen how these people seek 
to reduce all the rites and ceremonials of re- 
ligion to their elementary spiritual signifi- 
cance. And for such thinkers, whose lives 
are a continuous miracle from the direct in- 
spiration of the Father, and who see in the 
material world the vast theatre of his im- 
mediate action and control, the physical 
side of miracles, commonly so called, has 
indeed but little significance. As a rule 
they neither affirm nor deny miracles but 
quote them for the spiritual lesson they con- 
vey. Their faith does not depend on any 
recorded events, miraculous or otherwise, 
for its evidence, as a daily miracle of God's 
communion and inspiration is wrought 
within them in great power. And what is 
90 



The Hicksite Quakers. gi 

true of other miracles is equally true of the 
resurrection of Christ, which they interpret 
as symbolizing the resurrection of the soul 
from the grave of spiritual impotency, blind- 
ness and sin to the glorious freedom of the 
children of God. I have never known them 
to cite the resurrection of our Lord as proof 
of Man's immortality, but always in its 
spiritual bearings. Indeed, the whole fab- 
ric of modern Quakerism stands on this 
consciousness of immediate communion 
with God, on the teachings of the Light 
within. From that they draw their Moral 
Law, and all its imperative sanctions. From 
that likewise they derive their proof for im- 
mortality. And yet again and again have I 
heard the assertion by men ignorant of their 
real faith that they do not believe in the im- 
mortal life, or as it is usually put ; " The 
Quakers don't believe in heaven, do they ? " 
In such cases the questioners confound 
" Heaven " and " Immortality," while the 
Quakers keep them entirely distinct in their 
minds. With them heaven is not a locality, 



g2 The Hicksite Quakers. 

nor a time, but a spiritual condition, the 
state of unity and communion with God and 
Christ, and is attainable here and now as 
well as in the future life. " Behold the 
kingdom of heaven is within you," not will 
be, but immediately is. But they are firm 
believers in the undying nature of the hu- 
man soul, while they make no auguries of 
its future state, neither promising it the 
golden streets of the New Jerusalem, nor 
threatening it with the burning deeps of 
hell. Their Discipline speaks of " The un- 
certainty of this life, and the great impor- 
tance of a preparation for that which is to 
come." (Page 37, edition of 1872.) Elias 
Hicks, probably their greatest preacher, in 
his last letter, says ; " For it has ever been 
the lot of the righteous to pass through 
many trials and tribulations in their passage 
to that glorious, everlasting, peaceful and 
happy abode, where all sorrow and sighing 
come to an end." In the " Essays " the Au- 
thor repeatedly refers to " The Future 
Life," — to " Man's immortal nature," — to 



The Hicksite Quakers. 93 

the " Enjoyment of the eternal World," — 
to " The Courts of Heaven, both in the pres- 
ent and the future life," and such expres- 
sions and allusions may be found in all their 
writings and utterances. Words must lose 
their meaning before such people can be 
said to have lost their faith in immortality. 
It is true that the main stress of Quakerism 
is the attainment of the Divine Life now, 
wisely judging that he who takes counsel of 
the Spirit of God in his own heart, will not 
wander far from the eternal fold in the life 
beyond. They propound no " Scheme of 
salvation " from hell and the Devil, only a 
present and continual salvation from our 
own selfishness and base desires. They 
have no belief in original sin, in total de- 
pravity, in a personal devil or a localized 
hell, and so need no aid of any scheme to 
save them. Their Satan is the uninspired 
flesh, with its carnal lusts and passions ; their 
hell the condition of indifference to the life 
of God, and of Christ, or alienation from it, 
here or hereafter. From this satan and this 



g4 The Hicksite Quakers. 

hell they would be saved by being born 
into the communion of God the Father, as 
was Jesus. Evil, they say, is perverted 
good, consequent upon man's free will and 
his liberty of choice essential to the develop- 
ment of a moral being, and beyond that they 
attempt no solution of its origin, though 
they stoutly insist that it has no source in a 
personal devil. Above all do they firmly 
deny all foreordination and predestination, 
and plant themselves squarely on the moral 
accountability of every person, and his abil- 
ity, if humble and willing to heed God's 
warnings, to mould himself after the divine 
ideal. They are thus unencumbered by 
complicated theories of evil, and they are no 
doubt wise in freeing their worship from all 
subtleties concerning it. It is not so much 
a knowledge of the source whence evil comes 
that humanity craves, as it is the means by 
which man may overcome it and triumph 
in holiness. Whatever theory we may 
adopt, there will always remain an unex- 
plained residuum in the problem ; and to 



The Hichsite' Quakers. 95 

thoughtful minds, the awful fact of vice and 
sin and wickedness in humanity will be one 
of the insoluble enigmas of existence. 
Without seeking its solution, they can look 
death and eternity in the face, and shrink 
not back in dread and terror. Comforted by 
the ever present Power, which is alike in 
the Now and in the Hereafter, they go se- 
renely and trustingly into the mysteries that 
sleep forever beyond the visible boundaries 
of Being. And so their childlike faith at- 
tains its perfect consummation. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

They are Christians and Mystics. 

Having thus briefly stated the main points 
of the Hicksite Quaker faith, every tenet of 
which can be found in some parts of early 
Christianity, it remains to make some clas- 
sification of them in regard to it. What are 
they ? Heretics, infidels, pantheists, or 
plain Christians ? It is difficult to see more 
than one answer to the question, or how 
we can fail to classify them as the most posi- 
tive kind of Christians. To say that they 
live " Without God and Religion in the 
world " is an outrage on the meaning of 
words. If these people know them not, 
what can the terms " God " and " Relig- 
ion " mean ? Or can we with any better 
reason call them Pantheists, while we re- 
member that the purest Personality is in- 
9 6 



The Hicksite Quakers. 9J 

volved in the use of such terms as " Love," 
" Righteousness," " Divine Purpose," and 
" Perfect Holiness ? " Did you ever hear 
of righteous sticks and stones or stars ? Or 
of the holiness of the earth and moon ? As 
well might we say both, as to affirm " Pan- 
theism " of the Quaker faith ! With just 
as little reason can we hesitate to call them 
Christians, because they cannot go through 
the Augsburg Confession, and the Heidel- 
berg or Westminster Catechisms, or the 
thirty-nine Articles of the Episcopal Church. 
Jesus made no such tests, imposed no such 
examens on his disciples. " Follow me " 
is the Master's summons, and the Quakers 
have tried to obey it. To question their 
place in the legions of Christianity is to af- 
firm that men may be imbued with the spirit 
of Christ, meekly and reverently seek to fol- 
low in his footsteps according to the light 
that is given them, — may humbly struggle 
against sin and all manner of uncleanness 
in his name, — may bear the visible marks 
of his gentleness and love about them, — 



g8 The Hicksite Quakers. 

may fight a good fight in his strength, and 
finish the course in innocence and recti- 
tude ; — may do all this, and yet, for some 
metaphysical opinion not exactly conform- 
able to another's creed, may be outcasts 
from his kingdom, aliens from his Father's 
Love, and minions of darkness rather than 
Children of the Light. Let him believe 
such a creed who can, I have no sympathy 
with a Christianity that spurns these mani- 
fest marks of discipleship, and seeks a test 
other than such as is learned at the very feet 
of Jesus. It is from that very source the 
Quaker seeks to learn, — from the very 
Spirit which made Jesus the Christ unto 
men. 

There can be little doubt that a just es- 
timate of the Quakers will place them in the 
ranks of the Mystics, always a considerable 
power in the Church, yet always a class 
somewhat vague and indefinite in its limita- 
tions. Any definition will seem imperfect, 
yet one of the best is that given by Rev. 
James Martineau of London, in a remark- 



The Hicksite Quakers. gg 

able sermon entitled, " The Tides of the 
Spirit," in which he says ; " The Mystic 
would mould himself into accordance with 
the divine constancy by spreading the mar- 
gin of his prayer till it covers the whole of 
life ; and would let out the imprisoned 
glory of his highest mood to transfigure all 
the years." The devout Quaker seems to 
have aimed at precisely this moulding of 
himself into harmony with the constancy of 
God, — at making his whole nature like a 
harp whose every string is sensitive to the 
slightest touch of the Divine. It matters not 
that some may think this impossible of at- 
tainment, for a few souls have always sought 
it, and many of them have proved an in- 
spiration and means of revival within the 
confines of the Militant Church. The 
Quakers sought such attainment while 
mingling in the busy world, and not by re- 
tiring into meditative solitude. They were 
no monks nor hermits, but loving children 
of God. Their ideas are as old as the Church 
itself, and many and honorable names are 



/oo The Hicksite Quakers. 

embraced in the list of those who have held 
them. Eckhart, Origen, Lauler, Bernard 
of Clairvaux, the Saintly Fenelon of Cam- 
bray, Madame Guyon, and many a lesser 
light, have pointed to the same heavenly 
road that the Quakers show the true disci- 
ple. The Roman Catholic Communion has 
been especially fruitful in mystics of a high 
order, differing from each other according 
to their natures and the times upon which 
they were cast, but agreeing with each other 
and with all mystics in a few cardinal tenets. 
These are, for the most part, the immanence 
of God in his Creatures, his presence in the 
fulness of infinite power ; the reality of di- 
rect communion between his spirit and 
man's spirit ; that this communion is con- 
ditional upon the entire submission of the 
human will to the divine ; and that in this 
conscious presence of God and Christ lies 
the real meaning of all religion, and our 
only certainty of acceptance with Him who 
is the Author of all. One common charac- 
teristic is the tendency to ignore the forms 



The Hicksite Quakers. 101 

of sacraments and set orders of worship, and 
to trust in ecstatic visions and visitations. 
Some sought to know the very Essence of 
God by complete absorption into his will 
and love. This speculative side of Mysti- 
cism the Quakers did not adopt, but gave 
themselves to the devotional and practical 
side, which seeks the experience of imme- 
diate communion with the Father, and the 
realization of heaven in the heart while on 
earth. The protest against a heartless con- 
formity with external forms is common to 
nearly all mystics. In reading Lauler's ac- 
count of his own conversion, one might 
fancy himself reading an extract from Fox 
or Woolman, so similar are the experiences. 
The Mendicant Catholic Friar bade Mad- 
ame Guyon hear the voice of God in the si- 
lence of her own heart, words well adapted 
to the speech of an old-time Quaker 
preacher. They all have seasons of great 
desolation of spirit, when the struggle seems 
to have gone hopelessly against them, and 
God to have abandoned them. Then again 



102 The Hicksite Quakers. 

their souls will rise to sublimer heights, as 
on the wings of light, and they will spirit- 
ually dwell with God and Christ. 

But there is one feature of Quakerism 
which must not be omitted and by which it 
is widely separated from extreme mysti- 
cism. Many of the older mystics, like Eck- 
hart and even Madame Guyon, sought to 
merge their own personal being in the per- 
sonality of God. In the heights of their 
communion with the divine, they would lose 
their own identity, — and personal annihila- 
tion was the issue they aimed it. This is 
Pantheism, pure and simple, the Nirvana 
of the eastern mystic, — the destruction of 
the Ego in the Supreme. From this impo- 
tent conclusion the Quakers have been 
saved. However intimate the communion 
they experience, they never for an instant 
merge the human in the Divine, never lose 
their distinct personality. They were and 
are too intensely realistic for such a conclu- 
sion. They seek to envelope life in the at- 
mosphere of heaven ; but that only conse- 



The Hicksite Quakers. 103 

crates life, without evacuating it of its human 
nature. And thus they escape the greatest 
danger of mysticism, which, carried to ex- 
tremes, is but another word for individual 
annihilation. 

The mystics, at different periods in the 
history of the Christian Church, have proved 
themselves the very fountains of life and de- 
votion, and have done much to keep alive 
our holy religion in its purity. But they 
have never been numerous for the simple 
reason that the high spiritual tension re- 
quired of them is unattainable by the aver- 
age toiling, struggling Christian. The sub- 
jective element is too predominating in their 
experiences, and men are hardly competent 
to take religion reduced to its unembodied 
spiritualities as their everyday nourishment, 
but require a healthy mixture of embod- 
ied temporalities. Even the most saintly 
among them cannot keep permanently the 
heights of exaltation he can temporarily at- 
tain. As Wordsworth writes, 

" 'Tis difficult to keep 
Heights which the soul is competent to win." 



104 The Hicksite Quakers. 

This permanent altitude of the soul was 
made more difficult still with the Quakers, 
for they discarded all the sacraments, all 
the outward signs and symbols by which 
men are wont to call to mind the inward 
grace, and which they use as aids in its at- 
tainment, and threw the spirit directly upon 
the contemplation and experience of the 
deep significance of Baptism, Confirmation 
and the Holy Communion without the en- 
acting of the rite itself, relying solely on the 
purely Spiritual powers to give sign of 
quickened life within. No doubt this dis- 
carding all visible aids to faith has resulted 
in an exalted spirituality with the chosen 
few, whose souls are strung Sensitive to all 
intimations of the Divine. But it has as cer- 
tainly set a mark of Discipleship too high 
for common attainment, and necessarily 
limited the Society to the peculiar ones, 
who are capable of dwelling in the high 
places of worship. Moreover, it has, in this 
way reduced all spiritual experiences to one 
pattern, and so developed in many in- 



The Hicksite Quakers. 



103 



stances, one of its most manifest weak- 
nesses, an utter incompetency to appreciate 
and estimate any religious experiences not 
shaped after the pattern of its own. It is a 
common fault of enthusiasts, and some of 
the Quakers share it with others. 




CHAPTER IX. 

Some Further Considerations. 

The hostility of the Quakers to a " Hire- 
ling Ministry " and their reluctance to en- 
ter into any common worship not involving 
their own forms, have kept them isolated, 
a religious community by themselves. With 
some this prejudice was so strong that they 
disliked to attend funerals conducted by 
salaried clergymen. Their religious sym- 
pathies with other denominations were not 
kept sufficiently lively and interested, and 
very rarely found any public expression at 
all. They never interfered in the slightest 
degree with any other worship, observing 
the strictest neutrality in the differences of 
others, and always maintaining the right of 
every man to worship as he would. Some 

of the first Roman Catholics who came here 
106 



The Hicksite Quakers. ioy 

found the mystical Quakers their stoutest 
defenders in their right to establish the Holy 
Church on American soil, though with the 
services conducted by the Priesthood they 
had no sympathy whatever. In my own 
home our Father strictly forbade us to in- 
timate by word or deed any dislike for Cath- 
olicism when a new farm-hand came who was 
a Catholic. But with all their liberality in 
this respect, their minds were kept so intent 
on the contemplation of one peculiar phase 
of God's self-revelation as to disqualify them 
for a just appreciation of other modes of His 
manifestation, and they thus missed that 
comprehensive religious sympathy so es- 
sential to a body ministering to the wants 
and aspirations of large numbers of souls. 
The Society was thus kept limited in num- 
bers and shorn of much of the strength that 
might have resulted from inter-communion 
with other denominations. 

With their peculiar and exclusive ideas 
of " Waiting on the Lord in silence," the 
Quakers could admit no music into their 



108 The Hicksite Quakers. 

worship, and in their protest against the 
frivolities of life they shut out the cultiva- 
tion of its harmonies and melodies from the 
household, thus encroaching some on the 
ground of extreme Puritanism. In this way 
they lost to themselves one of the best allies 
of all worship, one of the purest inspirations 
of exalted feeling and belittled one of hu- 
manity's most sacred gifts. By a similar 
intensity of faith and exaggerated zeal to re- 
buke the follies of the world, they ignored 
the divine instinct of personal adornment 
in the young, and reduced their dress to an 
exact formula as to pattern, color and trim- 
mings. To such an extreme of exacting 
scruples were they sometimes carried, as to 
lead a young woman out of the meeting who 
wore too many ribbons of a bright hue. 
These same Friends, who protested so ear- 
nestly against devotion to the fashions of 
the world, adopted a fashion of their own, 
and adhered to it with such tenacity, that 
some travelled from Poughkeepsie to Phil- 
adelphia for the sole purpose of procuring 



The Hicksite Quakers. 109 

clothing of the appropriate cut and appear- 
ance. But many of them outgrew this spe- 
cies of fetichism and discarded the plain 
style of coat on the ground of inconsistency 
in taking so much trouble to secure it. My 
own Father was one of the number. Not 
only the severe plainness of their dress, but 
also the barrenness and dreariness of their 
meeting-houses, and the absence of home 
decoration, seemed to fly into the very face 
of that sense of artistic grace and beauty 
which is ever springing up in the heart of 
man and craving utterance. They seem to 
have been ignorant of the fact that God's 
revelations of himself are not confined to the 
immediate inner life of Man, but that he 
speaks to the mind in the intricacies of sci- 
ence, to the imagination in every line of 
grace, in every form of symmetry, and in 
every beauty of color and delicacy of tint or 
of sound ; and to the heart in every holy af- 
fection for wife or children or mankind. By 
the very intensity of faith and devotion 
Quakerism has passed too much into a 



no The Hicksite Quakers. 

stereotyped form of worship, and a set style 
of dress and speech, with little allowance for 
the progress of theological development, or 
the changing demands of a civilization that 
cannot pause. It has tried to mould its 
birthright members after one spiritual pat- 
tern, to make them, too, a marked and pecu- 
liar people in speech, in dress and in con- 
duct. For the attainment of this purpose, 
righteous enough in itself, but mistaken in 
its aim, they have assumed a minuteness of 
supervision reaching into all the details of 
life. That supervision is the more offen- 
sive, as it is vested in the members of the 
Meeting, and not in any one person trained 
to the work. The tyranny of the multitude 
is ever more exacting and less amenable to 
reason than tyranny of the single man. So 
this Society has made few converts, and has 
steadily lost to other denominations those 
born into its birthright membership, while 
not a few are waiting in silence the develop- 
ments of the new with a half suspended al- 
legiance to the old ; and some, alone, and 



The Hicksite Quakers. m 

aloof from sympathy with religion at all, 
are treading the mysterious and chilling 
ways of Agnosticism, that realm of thought 
and feeling whose only prayer is a cry of 
ignorance, and where no mid-day sun of 
trust nor midnight star of hope guides the 
wanderer to his eternal rest. 

And Quakerism has been a peculiar phase 
of Mysticism in this too, that it has left lit- 
tle impression on the general or theological 
literature of its time. This result is inevit- 
able from its theory of the ministry of the 
word, and its general deportment towards 
the learned professions. Its ministers need 
no special training if what they are to say 
is given them directly from the impressions 
of the Holy Spirit. They are to wait till 
those impressions come, and not attempt to 
gild the very speech of God with refine- 
ments of rhetoric or oratory. But the law 
was practically closed to the earnest Quaker, 
and medicine seems to have had little at- 
traction for them. So none of the learned 
professions have been enlisted in behalf of 



ii2 The Hicksite Quakers. 

their living faith, and the Society has left 
but few literary remains that will survive 
the test of time. There is a uniformity in all 
their expressions and experiences, and a 
narrowness in the range of thought, that 
promises little of perpetuity to their writ- 
ings. They have been too busy with the 
devotional and ethical phase of their cultus 
to be very productive in the field of letters. 
Believing, as they do, that God works 
through human instrumentalities, they neg- 
lected the parallel fact, that the more deli- 
cately fashioned and perfected the instru- 
ment is, the more perfect its display of the 
various powers committed to its keeping. 
The harp that would sing in many tones 
needs more than a single string. 

But it must not be forgotten that the 
Quakers have long been active promoters of 
educational interests. Some of the earliest 
Boarding Schools in the country were 
founded by them, and in Dutchess County 
Old " Nine Partners " long held a promi- 
nent place. Not only have they maintained 



The Hicksite Quakers. 113 

excellent schools, but Swarthmore College 
in Pennsylvania is a monument of their de- 
sire for the higher education. Its President 
is one of the most accomplished educators 
of the day, and ranks among the first in 
literary attainment. Ezra Cornell, the 
Founder of Cornell University, one of the 
greatest educational institutions of the day, 
was a Quaker. Still it must be noted that 
those who have achieved the most have not 
done it through the direct influence of the 
meeting, and very few old-time Quakers 
have attained eminence in letters or in art. 
Quakerism however, has given us our 
most truly National Poet, John Greenleaf 
Whittier, the Singer most identified with the 
People, and most in sympathy with their 
aspirations. In his song the true Quaker 
sentiment has found its highest and most 
perfect expression, while the white-haired 
singer kept his place among the silent wor- 
shippers on " First Day " mornings. Its 
truths are fresh and vital in his mind, and 
he has uttered them in his verse freely. In 



H4 The Hicksite Quakers. 

" The Pennsylvania Pilgrim " he has put 
the very spirit of their worship into his 
song : 

" Lowly before the Unseen Presence knelt 
Each waiting heart, till haply some one felt 
On his moved lips the seal of silence melt. 

" Or, without spoken words, low breathings stole 
Of a diviner life, from soul to soul, 
Baptizing in one tender thought the whole." 

The last three lines are full of the deep 
meaning of a " Silent Meeting " among the 
Friends. So, too, their sense of God's 
Providence is given in these stanzas from 
" The Eternal Goodness." 

"And so beside the silent Sea 
I wait the muffled Oar \ 
No harm can come from him to me 
On ocean or on shore. 

" I know not where his islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond his love and care." 



The Hicksite Quakers. 115 

What " heretics " they are, these Quakers 
to put so absolute a trust in God's guardian 
care ! Would that such " heresy " were 
common in the land ! 

In the exquisite poem " The Prayer of 
Agassiz " he has given utterance to their 
^nought of prayer. 

" Then the master in his place 
Bowed his head a little space, 
And the leaves by soft airs stirred,. 
Lapse of wave and cry of bird 
Left the solemn hush unbroken 
Of that wordless prayer unspoken, 
While its wish, on earth unsaid, 
Rose to heaven interpreted. 
As, in life's best hours, we hear 
By the Spirit's finer ear 
His low voice within us, thus 
The All-Father heareth us ; 
And his holy ear we pain 
With our noisy words and vain ; 
Not for Him our violence 
Storming at the gates of sense, 
His the primal language, his 
The eternal Silences." 



u6 The Hicksite Quakers. 

And again in the Prologue to " Miriam " 
he touches their faith in the Immanent God, 
when he speaks of 

" The tokens of that primal Force, 
Older than heaven itself, yet new 
As the young heart it reaches to, 
Beneath whose steady impulse rolls 
The tidal wave of human souls ; 
Guide, Comforter and Inward Word ! 
The Eternal Spirit of the Lord ! " 

And yet again he says : 

" Since everywhere the Spirit walks 
The garden of the heart, and talks 
With man, as under Eden Trees, 
In all his varied languages." 
• • • • • 

" By inward sense, by outward signs, 
God's presence still the heart divines." 

In " The Meeting " is found a still more 
complete statement of Quaker Belief and 
practice. There, too, they will find, mir- 
rored in the sweetest verse, more than one 
of the little prejudices which disfigure the 



The Hicksite Quakers. ny 

Friendly Escutcheon. In this very poem 
of " The Meeting " he gives a skilful thrust 
at music, and art, and learning in the pul- 
pit : 

" I ask no organ's soulless breath 
To drone the themes of life and death, 
No altar candle-lit by day, 
No ornate wordsman's rhetoric play, 
No cool philosophy to teach 
Its bland audacities of speech 
To double-tasked idolaters 
Themselves their Gods and worshippers, 
No pulpit hammered by the fist 
Of loud asserting dogmatist, 
Who borrows from the hand of love 
The smoking thunderbolts of Jove." 

But in higher moods he rises above all carp- 
ing criticism and prejudice of sect, and sings 
the Quaker faith in God's universal pres- 
ence in exulting strains : 

"•I trace His presence in the blind 
Pathetic gropings of my kind, — 
In prayers from sin and sorrow wrung, 
In cradle-hymns of life they sung. 



ji8 The Hicksite Quakers. 

Each, in its measure, but a part 
Of the unmeasured Over-Heart." 

— Miriam, p. 342. 

Or with yet clearer emphasis he says : 

" Somewhat of goodness, something true 
From sun and spirit shining through 
All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark 
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark, 
Attests the presence everywhere 
Of love and providential care." 

But we cannot linger among his delight- 
ful songs. In all his moods, he is evermore 
the Dear Old Quaker Poet. 




CHAPTER X. 

A Summary. 

Upon the weaknesses of the Quaker Or- 
ganization it is not my purpose to dwell at 
any length. Mysticism has not, of itself, 
sufficient coherence to form the basis of a 
permanent society. And when, to the tenets 
of Mysticism, is added a kind of asceticism 
in dress and speech and conduct, which is 
entirely foreign to the atmosphere of these 
days, it needs no prophetic mind to foresee 
the ultimate disappearance of the Friends 
as a Society or a toal change in some fun- 
damental characteristics. That Society has 
produced a noble type of Manhood and of 
Womanhood, saintly souls in unity with 
high ideals of God and of Humanity. It has 
proclaimed the Immanent Father, con- 
sciously active in the souls of men, and the 
119 



120 The Hicksite Quakers. 

great trend of Christianity to-day is away 
from other theories, and toward this of im- 
manence. It has defended absolute tolera- 
tion in worship, and advocated the superi- 
ority of Man to all institutions. It has stood 
for the spirit of the Scriptures as against the 
letter thereof, — for Man's Free Will and 
Moral Accountability before God, as against 
Augustinianism, Calvinism and Necessity. 
The greatest advance in Theology for the 
last century has been away from the neces- 
sitarians and towards those of the Alexan- 
drian Greeks, — away from a literal con- 
struction towards a spiritual interpretation 
of the words of the Bible, — away from a 
catechetical strictness of thinking about God 
and Christ, and towards a holy living in 
God and Christ, — away from a mechanical 
theory of Atonement by substitution or ran- 
som, and towards a spiritual salvation from 
sin through the Spirit of God as manifested 
in Jesus Christ, — away from a semi-idola- 
trous devotion to rites and towards a more 
spiritual phase of Christianity ; and all 



The Hicksite Quakers. 121 

these changes are clearly in the direction of 
the Cardinal Doctrines of the Quakers. 
These doctrines have always existed in the 
Historic Church, but have of late years re- 
ceived a remarkable development in its 
Sermons and books. In a charming book 
by A. J. C. Hare, " Memorials of a Quiet 
Life," are the following passages, taken 
from Maria Hare's Note Book, which would 
be typical Quakerism from a Quaker pen. 

" All the rubbish of earthly mindedness 
seemed swept away, and I lay, as it were, 
quite passive for the acting of God's Spirit. 
Thoughts of God were the first to spring 
up in the morning ; my heart waited not 
for my head to teach it how to pray, but was 
lifted up unconsciously and without effort 
in words of prayer and praise." And again 
she speaks of " The operation of His Spirit, 
sometimes felt almost sensibly in an inde- 
scribable communion with Him ; " or fur- 
ther ; " In prayer I felt most strongly that 
God was in me, that I no longer had to 
search for Him out of self, His temple was 



122 The Hick site Quakers. 

my soul." Yet Mrs. Hare was a devout 
member of the Church of England, and ex- 
tracts of similar import might be made from 
writers of other denominations. They are 
quoted to show that Quakers are not the 
only ones holding these peculiar tenets. 

Sunday after Sunday all the great truths 
of Quakerism are proclaimed from pulpits 
all over the land, and if the Friends grieve 
at the decay of their Organization, they can 
also rejoice that its truths are slowly but 
surely leavening the great mass of Chris- 
tendom. Let me be clearly understood here, 
— I do not say the Quakers have brought 
all this about of themselves, but that they 
have all along had hold of many of the 
truths and of the Spirit that are working 
the mighty change, and so were clearly in 
the line of true historic religious develop- 
ment. 

If Quakerism, in its denominational form, 
is to pass away, it will be because its mis- 
sion is done, its truths awarded their true 
place in the Christian Life and the best of 



The Hicksite Quakers. 123 

its Spirit infused into the Historic Church, 
and so its " Raison d'etre " has ceased to 
exist. But it may be that in the counsels 
of that inscrutable wisdom to which it has 
ever looked for light and strength, it is des- 
tined to be revived and transformed to suit 
the Spirit of the times that are before us, 
and still to bear its simple yet comforting 
testimony to a doubting world. But all evi- 
dence now points to its probable extinction. 
Whatever may be its fate, we may rest as- 
sured its members are neither Infidels, Athe- 
ists nor Pantheists, but devout, believing 
Christians, — that their faith has been life's 
Lest consolation to many a weary soul, — and 
has given it rest and peace in Christ and his 
love, — and that in private or in public, they 
have ever borne and will ever bear, faithful 
witness to the Grace, Majesty and forgiving 
Mercy of that God, " Who is the Author of 
Peace and the Lover of Concord, — in the 
knowledge of whom standeth our Eternal 
life, and whose service is perfect freedom " 
of body and of Soul. 



CHAPTER XL 

Where Shall They Go? 

Having transferred my own allegiance,, 
through a period of hesitation and investi- 
gation, from the Quaker Society to the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church, I have been sur- 
prised and gratified to find how many of the 
Descendants of the Quakers have found 
their spiritual homes in that communion. A 
little consideration will show us that this is, 
after all, the natural course of things. For 
the more thoughtful among them must dis- 
cover that the Quakers have reduced their 
absence of form itself to a perfect form and 
so are become extreme formalists. Their 
opposition to a ceremonial worship, in- 
tended to emphasize their repugnance to 
the exaltation of ritual, dogma and sacer- 
dotal rule over the spirit of devotion and 
124 



The Hichsite Quakers. 125 

continual service of God, has degenerated 
into a fixed ceremonial. A Quaker service 
is as thoroughly determined beforehand, as 
to its form, as an Episcopal service. Any 
persistent violation of that form would be 
as promptly censured and punished among 
Quakers as among Episcopalians. The 
silence of a Quaker meeting is just as much 
expressive of the inward worship of their 
hearts, as the uttered prayer and praise of 
the Church, and no more so. The Friends 
very properly insist upon compliance with 
their order, and punish recalcitrant mem- 
bers by disowning them. Public worship is 
impossible without some form, and without 
public worship all religious organization is 
impossible. But it is a permanent danger of 
all religious service, that the ceremony be- 
comes evacuated of its spirit, and is prized 
for its own sake, rather than for the religious 
life it fosters. The Quakers are a living 
proof of this tendency. In their honest ef- 
forts to do away with all institutional re- 
ligion, they have instituted a monotonous 



126 The Hicksite Quakers, 

formalism, devoid of the variety and rich 
spiritual symbolism of the services of the 
Church. And so we find the extremists 
among them just as thorough formalists in 
their services, their dress and their speech, 
as the Ritualists in the Episcopal Church. 
The extreme conservative among them at- 
taches as much importance to the proper 
period of silence, to the use of certain 
phrases and forms of sermonizing, to the 
plain coat, to the " Thee " and " Thou," and 
the " First-Day " of their speech, as the Rit- 
ualistic Rector attaches to his procession- 
als and recessionals, his copes and albs and 
chasubles and all the other ritualistic para- 
phernalia. In either case, when the cere- 
monial is invested with its living spiritual 
significance, whether it be silence or ritual 
it may be grand and impressive. But when 
the spirit has departed from either, it be- 
comes a barren form. There is just as little 
meaning to an earnest soul in the superflu- 
ous whining of the ultra Quaker formalist 
over the degeneracy of the age, over its 



The Hicksite Quakers. i2j 

pianos and violins in homes, its fine dresses 
and amusements, as there is in the clerical 
cry for the church, with all her progressive 
instincts and necessities, to return again to 
the " Dogmatic, Sacramental, Sacerdotal 
and Ritualistic religion of three hundred 
years ago." Both forget that the world 
moves, — and each would stop the " Riot of 
private opinion" with his peculiar whim. 
But the Church moves on, — and will ulti- 
mately relegate both to the realm of effete 
causes. There is just as little spiritual food 
in the one as in the other for a soul hunger- 
ing and thirsting after the righteousness of 
God. The younger minds of the Hicksite 
Quakers are alive to these facts, — they are, 
by virtue of their inherited instincts and 
training a religious class in the best sense 
of the term, — and while they turn with long- 
ing hearts from both Quaker fossilism and 
Episcopal Mediaevalism, they can accept the 
Liturgy of the Living, Aggressive and Pro- 
gressive Church, not as a formula of Divine 
origin, nor as the sole avenue of God's re- 



128 The Hicksite Quakers. 

deeming grace, but as an order of service at 
once convenient, beautiful, appropriate, ex- 
pressive and necessary, — the fruit of many 
centuries of Christian culture and worship, 
and with such modifications as it is likely to 
receive from time to time at the hands of 
the Church, admirably adapted to the wants 
of the age, both for public worship and pri- 
vate devotion. This objection to the Li- 
turgical Service once overcome, all other 
Quaker ideas harmonize more nearly with 
the Episcopal Church than with any other 
Denomination. 

Their central doctrine of God's imma- 
nence, and of his immediate communion 
with the Spirit of Man, I have heard Sun- 
day after Sunday from the lips of a devout 
and scholarly Doctor of Divinity in an 
Episcopal pulpit, and I find it affirmed also 
in the works and sermons of the clergy. 
The learned Maurice, of England, says: — 
" Continued intercourse with the Father of 
Light ... is the only safeguard." 
And again, " I feel that there is another 



The Hicksite Quakers. 129 

spirit dwelling with my Spirit, and willing 
to guide it into all good." And his Biog- 
rapher says of him : " A certain inward 
voice, a certain Inward Light, was however 
acquiring an authority with him superior to 
the indications of circumstance." And the 
Rev. F. W. Robertson says : — " God's spirit 
in the soul, an inward power of doing the 
thing we will and ought, — that is strength, 
and nothing else." And again, " The 
thought of your mind is perchance the 
thought of God." And, " It is given us to 
distinguish between the voice which is from 
above, and that which speaks from below," 
and all through that wonderful sermon on 
" The loneliness of Christ," he makes even 
better statement of the doctrine than the 
Quakers themselves. 

Of course it is not pretended that all in the 
Church hold this idea, for it is fortunate that 
there is here no authority to compel all 
thought and expression to assume one 
mould, and the Church is comprehensive 
enough to embrace the Spirit of a Maurice 
9 



ijo The Hichsite Quakers. 

or a Hare, and the ultramontane tendencies 
of the Theologian whose gaze is averted 
from the present to his millennial past. 

So, too, the Quaker idea of common wor- 
ship by participation in one common feeling 
and aspiration. 

" Baptising in one tender thought the 
whole," is realized in the use of the Collects 
of the Book of Common Prayer, by which 
all are brought to join in one worship. But 
especially in its freedom from the gloomy 
tenets of Calvinism is the Church attractive 
to a mind trained in the Quaker School. Its 
theology is least infected with the doctrines 
of Election, Fore-ordination, Predestina- 
tion, or the more terrible one of Eternal 
Damnation. Bibliolatry, too, has no su- 
preme rule in this denomination, and liberty 
of opinion is as absolute in its Communion 
as is possible within the limits of devotion 
to God and Christ. It makes no require- 
ments for admission beyond the Apostles' 
Creed, and imposes no special, particular- 
ized interpretation of its phraseology. It 



The Hicksite Quakers. 131 

requires no experience of any miraculous 
conversion, and leaves the individual con- 
science as unfettered as Quakerism can. 
Not only is one's own liberty of thinking and 
acting as free as it could be anywhere, but 
the Church would not presume to interfere 
in matters of amusement, of forms of mar- 
riage ceremony, and of supervision over 
members such as Quakerism has assumed. 
The minuteness of that supervision has ma- 
terially weakened the Society of Friends, — ■ 
the Church has no desire to undertake it. 
She assumes no authority over the con- 
science of men, — she is content to leave 
them in the freedom wherewith Christ has 
made them free. 

These facts are becoming more and more 
apparent to the growing younger minds 
among the Quakers, and are operating pow- 
erfully, not only with them, but often with 
old and firm adherents of the Society. My 
Father was a regular and devoted attendant 
at meetings as long as he had strength to 
go, but he said, " If I should ever leave the 



1 32 The Hicksite Quakers. 

Friends, it would be for the Episcopal 
Church." He saw its wise liberty and ap- 
proved it. He often approved of Episcopal 
freedom from " Rant about religion," and 
from what he, in his homely phrase, denom- 
inated " Hell-fire preaching." His chief 
objection, after that of a " Hireling Minis- 
try," was to subscribing the formulated doc- 
trine of the Trinity, which he did not then 
know was no part of the Confession of 
Faith required, beyond what stands in the 
Apostles' Creed. I once heard him say to 
an Episcopal Clergyman, " If thee will say, 
as the Scripture says, that God was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto himself, 
and not add another word of thy own, I will 
he in perfect unity with thee." So when his 
Son, after years of careful thought, gave in 
his allegiance from conviction to the His- 
toric Church, and passed into its fold, he 
interposed no word of censure, nor betrayed 
the least disappointment or regret. He 
foresaw and admitted the decay of his own 
.Society, and in no way expected it to be the 



The Hicksite Quakers. 133 

Church of the future. He believed the 
Quakers were more nearly in unity with the 
Episcopalians than with any others, and 
more than once gave expression to his con- 
victions. And while no step of my life has 
been more fruitful of good results to my- 
self, mentally and spiritually, my satisfaction 
with it is exalted and intensified by the 
knowledge of its approval by his pure and 
upright spirit. The Quaker Society has al- 
ready furnished, through its descendants, 
three Bishops for the Church, — Alonzo 
Potter, Horatio Potter and Henry Potter ; 
devout men, wise administrators, and an 
honor to the Priestly Office. And apropos 
of this fact, I may tell the answer of the 
Quaker Lady, a few months since, who, 
when rallied by me on the propriety of unit- 
ing with the church and leaving her own 
society, aptly replied : — " Oh no, there is 
great need of Quakers yet, to furnish the 
best materials out of which to make Episco- 
pal Bishops." And as I lay down my pen 
and commit this little work to its fate, I 



i$4 The Hicksite Quakers. 

trust it will not be amiss in me to say to 
those Quakers who find their religious as- 
sociations broken up in the decay of their 
Society, and are waiting some opening to 
transfer their allegiance to a living Church, 
that they need make no unwilling surrender 
of their liberty of thought, investigation and 
individual opinion to enter the Communion 
of the Episcopal Church ; that the Church 
fears no honest thinking, no sincere search 
after truth ; that her Clergy are no Priestly 
tyrants, but willing leaders in the great 
fields of science and of general thought ; that 
her devotional heritage will enrich their 
lives beyond all measure ; that her great 
minds will unfold to them treasures of 
thought and lines of investigation to charm 
and delight them ; while all her ordinances, 
administered in Christian love and freedom, 
will call all truth " To their pure minds 
by way of remembrance," and help to unite 
them more intimately with that Spirit they 
have already learned to adore, with the 
Christ in whom that Spirit dwelt in its ful- 
ness, and in whom is peace evermore. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Conclusion. 

The previous chapters were written some 
years ago. Since then a new movement has 
begun within the society of Hicksite 
Friends. An effort is in progress to put it 
more fully in line with the requirements of 
modern thought and action. Its members 
are convinced of the necessity of immediate, 
systematic and harmonious work to pro- 
long its life and increase its usefulness. It 
is a hopeful sign that they recognize and 
admit its weakness, are convinced of the 
main causes leading to its deterioration, and 
are ready to apply the necessary remedies. 
These causes lie chiefly in directions previ- 
ously indicated in this book ; in the decrease 
and intellectual poverty of its ministry, — in 
the loss of its young members, — in its use- 
less exclusiveness and hostility to music and 
135 



136 The Hicksite Quakers. 

artistic decoration, — in its isolation from 
other Christian Bodies, — in its failure to 
keep up a rational interest in Holy Script- 
ure, and in the critical study of its books, — 
and especially in the loss of its missionary 
spirit to bear the preached word to the 
thirsting multitudes by the wayside. But a 
new spirit, it is claimed, has been infused in- 
to its ranks, a Neo-Quakerism is in process 
of development, whose bow of promise is al- 
ready in the sky. To this Regeneration of 
Quakerism we must give conscientious au- 
dience, in our final chapter. At Swarth- 
more College in Pennsylvania, which is rec- 
ognized as the official educational institu- 
tion of the Society, large and important 
general Conferences have been held for the 
purpose of considering the present and fut- 
ure welfare of the organization, to revive its 
failing spirit, to kindle fresh enthusiasm, 
open new avenues of social and philanthrop- 
ic effort, and most important of all, to 
gather into the fold again and retain in the 
work of the society, the young people in its 



The Hicksite Quakers. 137 

birthright membership. They realize that 
these have been alienated by too much 
stringency in matters of dress, of speech, of 
music, of amusements, of marriage, and by 
a too rigid adherence to its inflexible forms 
of worship and of service. They are con- 
vinced that the root ideas of Quakerism can 
be maintained in their purity, and all this 
minute supervision of members be aban- 
doned for greater freedom in non-essentials. 
It is a hopeful spirit. They maintain the 
foundations of old Quakerism with fervid 
zeal, and assert the conscious communion 
of the human soul with the living God as 
the mainstay of their faith, as the essential 
sine qua non of their worship, just as they 
have always done, only enforcing it now in 
the name of modern research and modern 
progress, and supplementing it by all 
reasonable instrumentalities for its continu- 
ous missionary propagation, thereby assim- 
ilating themselves more nearly with the his- 
toric body of the Church. 

In that great gathering of three thousand 



138 The Hicksite Quakers. 

people, the Friends not only heard their 
primary religious concepts propounded and 
explained, but they heard the more star- 
tling assertion that the Higher Criticism of 
the Bible and the ripest conclusions of Sci- 
ence all tend to establish the validity of 
those concepts, and to furnish them with 
their logical " raison d'etre," apart from 
their own inward evidence. In this they are 
no doubt right, and in strict harmony with 
the trend of liberal thought. And upon 
such a basis they urge the more extended 
and critical study of the Sacred Scriptures, 
and especially of the life of the blessed 
Jesus, for clear and conclusive proofs that 
Christianity, as exemplified and taught by 
Him, is founded upon this essential faith in 
God's immediate inspiring Presence, and 
upon no other basis. Thus, in his new de- 
parture, the modern Friend would avail 
himself of the researches and investigations 
of the learned in other denominations to 
put himself " en rapport " with the tenden- 
cies of the age, and as an intellectual vindi- 



The Hichsite Quakers. 139 

cation of the main tenet of his faith. But 
unlettered ignorance will not be available to 
proclaim this modern phase of Quakerism, 
and out from this representative body of 
Friends comes the call for a better ministry, 
the ministry of more thoroughly educated 
people. Not for men and women educated 
for the special work of the ministry, and set 
apart as a privileged priestly class, but for 
men and women so educated and trained as 
speakers, that should they feel called to 
preach the word, they may do it with ac- 
ceptance to cultivated listeners. Dr. Ed- 
ward O. Janney says on this point ; " We 
do not, indeed, educate for the ministry, but 
. . . we ought to educate our young 
people so that, if they become ministers 
later in life, they will be qualified for it." 
(Swarthmore Conferences, 1896, Second 
Session, p. 65.) 

In the same Conference Anna M. Jackson 
says ; " When we have young, earnest, ed- 
ucated, consecrated teachers of Quakerism, 
they will prove to the thinking masses that 



140 The Hicksite Quakers. 

the development of man, physically, men- 
tally, and morally, has regularly grown from 
the beginning, guided by inexorable Law, 
the product of Love, — not only the ' great- 
est thing in the world,' but the most rational 
thing in the world." (Ibid. p. 59.) Many 
others uttered similar opinions, and no dis- 
sent was expressed by the conference, which 
seemed thus to be in unity with them. Ver- 
ily, the fetters of conservatism are falling 
away, and these Quakers are putting them- 
selves into a position where intellectual cult- 
ure is not worthless for the ministry of 
Christ, nor the wisdom of this world folly 
to the most consecrated spirits. It is a 
great step in advance. 

But with this change the militant spirit 
of old-time Quakerism is reviving. It is no 
longer enough to preach the Gospel at 
home, it must be carried to those who have 
it not, — and an organized propaganda of 
their faith must be instituted, to shed light 
in dark places. Dr. Jesse W. Holmes very 
tersely touches a weak spot when he says ; 



The Hicksite Quakers. 141 

" Instead of preaching the Gospel to every 
creature, we have settled down to preach- 
ing it to each other." (Ibid. 50.) Now it 
must be carried to the masses, who are hun- 
gering for it. " The masses/' says Anna 
M. Jackson, " are outside of the churches 
searching for something they do not find 
there." (Ibid. 58.) This something Quak- 
erism is to supply, and hence comes their 
clarion call for missionaries, to bear abroad 
the Good Tidings, not of any elaborate 
" Plan of Salvation " nor " Scheme of Re- 
demption," but of the Eternal Presence of 
God and his Christ in the soul, capable of 
saving to the uttermost any of the children 
of men. " The World is ripe for Quakerism, 
and the masses need it, but we touch them 
at too few points," says the same speaker 
(p. 59). To touch them at more points, new 
instrumentalities must be called into action. 
The First Day School is adopted, although 
once frowned down as possessing some 
priestly element. Even music is introduced, 
though some protests are raised against this 



142 The Hicksite Quakers. 

as not friendlike. The greatest freedom of 
organization and management is allowed, 
to enable them to adapt themselves to dif- 
ferent environments. Some advised affilia- 
tion with Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions for practical work (though not without 
dissent,) and even Orders of Deaconesses 
were favorably mentioned. The forming 
of Adult Classes among laborers not in any- 
church connection was strongly urged, and 
the necessity of thoroughly equipped 
teachers was made apparent. So would 
they make the practical nature of their re- 
ligion felt among the impoverished and 
neglected ones of Earth. And in all this ac- 
tive work of the body militant, they do not 
seek to proselyte from other churches, but 
to reach those who have no religious con- 
nection, and are still in ignorance of the 
Voice of God pleading within them. 

Thus the Neo-Quakers are putting on the 
armor once more to fight anew the old bat- 
tle against indifference and vice and sin, 
armed with new weapons forged in the 



The Hicksite Quakers. 143 

modern workshop, and burnished and 
edged with worldly culture, as well as with 
the baptism of the Spirit. They are called 
upon to discard the outgrown and useless 
conservatisms that have hindered their 
progress and their best talent, — to no lon- 
ger wear the trammels of peculiar dress and 
speech, and to become, like St. Paul, " all 
things to all men," that some may be saved. 
And with all this they are urged to seek 
grounds of agreement rather than of differ- 
ence with other denominations, to visit their 
churches, and so establish an affiliation with 
the great body of militant Christianity, from 
which they have hitherto stood aloof. Ex- 
clusiveness shall cease, and brotherhood 
prevail. It is a magnificent vision of 
growth, and has in it elements of coherence, 
which the Progressive Friends, once so 
strong and promising in Pennsylvania, 
lacked utterly. Bare progress is too vague 
and indefinite a tie to furnish a working mo- 
tive, — it must have a definite direction, a 
luminous something to be won, — a note of 



144 Tbe Hicksite Quakers, 

no uncertain sound by which it can be dis- 
tinguished, and which will be its guide in 
storm and sunshine. 

What, then, is to be the key-note of this 
new movement ? What the one unmistak- 
ably celestial tone, sounding on unbrokenly 
through all the multiform discords that 
must result from the clashing of diverse nat- 
ures and opinions ? There must be a cen- 
tral enthusiasm to draw and to hold them. 
For the select few, as we have pointed out 
in an earlier chapter, the conscious com- 
munion of the All-Father in seasons of 
great spiritual exaltation will be the inspira- 
tion for the work. But this is too high a 
tension for the multitude who must be won 
in the new crusade. They have little time 
and less inclination for the introspective 
personal communion with the unseen Spirit 
of Life. Only by long effort can they rise 
to such heights of Spiritual attainment. 
There is need of a personal attachment, a 
personal affection, a personal inspiration, — 
the tangible leadership of the Divine. And 



The Hick site Quakers. 145 

where in all history, in all life, in all crea- 
tion, can that be found in greater fulness 
than in the one personality in which the 
perfect graces of humanity inhere, purified, 
exalted, and touched by the life of God, — 
in the One Person of history, in Jesus of 
Nazareth, which is the Christ ? So the Neo- 
Quakerism reverts again to the Holy Jesus 
and His stainless life for the fountains 
whence the thirsting novices shall be called 
to drink. Not that there are no other di- 
vine souls in the spiritual Hierarchy, but in 
Him is the revelation of the Father most 
complete, and through him is the Divine 
Love most clearly manifested. All shall 
be called to quench their thirst for the 
Divine at this ever open source with- 
out excluding other incarnations the 
world may have known. But there is 
no sense of expiation, of mediation in their 
call. " We do not employ any man to 
be mediator between us and God," said 
Edgar M. Zavitz in the Conference (p. 

24). None the less are they loyal to the 
10 



146 The Hichsite Quakers. 

Christ of history and of Revelation. The 
same speaker continues ; " No other 
church in Christendom owns him as its 
head to the extent that Friends do. All 
others look to man to conduct the services, 
— we alone and entirely to Christ " (p. 24). 
It is to the living and reigning Christ in 
their hearts they turn, just as the Quakers 
have always done, not as one bearing their 
punishment that they may escape it, but as 
showing them the stainless life, the faith in 
the Father and communion with him, and 
the sacred Brotherhood of Man. In this 
simple faith of their Fathers, the Christian- 
ity, as they think, of revelation, they would 
go forth to bear their glad evangel to the 
fainting multitudes by the way. 

But this Glad Evangel implies Evangel- 
ists, and evangelists are mortals who must 
live by their labor. How then shall the 
ministry of the Church be maintained ? 
Here lies the crucial test in the rejuvenation 
of historic Quakerism. How can their min- 
istry be sustained, without yielding one of 



The Hichsite Quakers. 147 

their cardinal testimonies, that against a 
" hireling ministry ? " Is a paid ministry 
necessarily mercenary ? It involves a re- 
opening of the whole question, and a care- 
ful consideration as to whether the offensive 
use of that word " hireling " has not been 
utterly overdone. Why should it be invidi- 
ously applied to those who use their gifts 
in a spiritual way, any more than to those 
who labor in the intellectual field ? This 
distinction is not only not a, vital point in the 
doctrine of Friends, but appears to be in di- 
rect opposition to all just inferences from 
that doctrine. No hard and fast line can be 
drawn where pay cannot be given and ac- 
cepted for real services rendered. 

No doubt it once was a vital issue when 
Quakerism was largely a protest against 
priestly domination. But now, we have no 
state church, and when, in the light of evo- 
lution, it is equally a tenet that all the 
graces of mind and spirit are the free gifts 
of God in his magnificent unfoldings, why 
should this one be singled out as to be nee- 



148 The Hichsite Quakers. 

essarily given for the benefit of humanity 
free, while others are liberally rewarded ? 
If the pious Quaker who labors in the vine- 
yard of the Lord as a Doctor of Medicine 
can rightfully demand remuneration for his 
labors, why should not the one who is called 
to work in the spiritual vineyard be equally 
entitled to remuneration for his toil ? The 
graces and intellectual powers of the latter 
are no more the free endowment of the Fa- 
ther, than the skill and knowledge of the for- 
mer. Thus the broader view of our human 
attainments and endowments can abolish the 
difficulty that seems to furnish an insupera- 
ble obstacle to the prospective develop- 
ment of the church. Not by any less fidelity 
in the use of God's gifts to men shall this be 
accomplished, but by a more comprehensive 
view of the entire contents of his gifts, — the 
full scope of which is discernible only under 
the illumination of the idea of evolution as a 
divine process. The intellectual powers, 
the spiritual powers, the affectional, are all 
susceptible of improvement by careful at- 



The Hicksite Quakers. 149 

tention and nurture, and there can be no 
reason why the results of the one side of hu- 
man nature should be liberally rewarded in 
this world's coin, and the other side be de- 
nounced as " hireling " or mercenary when 
it asks its adequate compensation. By the 
logical and consistent extension of its own 
fundamental doctrines can Neo-Quaker- 
ism be saved from the impotent conclusion 
that would deprive it of an active and a help- 
ful ministry of the Living Word. The right 
of the ministry to its pecuniary reward is 
just as legitimate an outcome of Friends' 
doctrine as the right of any laborer to his 
hire in the toil of the farm or the factory. 
There will be conservatives who will pro- 
test against this, but their antagonism must 
be overcome for the living body must avail 
itself of the means necessary for the propa- 
gation of its faith. The Church that ceases 
to be a missionary body in the true sense, 
thereby dooms itself to stagnation and de- 
cay. The genuinely missionary spirit of 
these conferences is the best herald of a bet- 



1 50 The Hicksite Quakers. 

ter day for Quakerism, and its propagation 
depends largely upon a cultivated and con- 
secrated ministry. But another evidence of 
the growth in grace among them is the pres- 
ence of the Orthodox Quakers side by side 
with the Hicksites in this conference, though 
not officially representing their own Soci- 
ety. No one, in reading their discourses, 
could distinguish the one from the other by 
the tenor of their speeches. 

I have thus tried to represent, briefly but 
fairly, the revival that is going on in some 
sections of the country among the Hicksite 
Friends. Of the entire sincerity and ear- 
nestness of the movement there can be no 
shadow of doubt. The leaders are noble 
spirits, and speak confidently of success in 
their undertaking. The opening Address of 
the Chairman of the Conference, Aaron M. 
Powell, was overflowing with faith in the 
inherent vitality of the Society, and in its 
adequacy for still disseminating true spirit- 
ual religion. Many others shared that con- 
fidence, and spoke hopefully of its future 



The Hicksite Quakers. 151 

advances. Joseph Wharton, following the 
parallel of Lincoln's famous speech, says 
that the mission of Quakerism " Is to take 
care that religion of the people, for the peo- 
ple, and by the people, shall not perish," nor 
be relegated in its ministry to a priestly 
hierarchy. The movement has by no means 
spread to all sections of the church, though 
committees are travelling widely bearing 
witness to the new, serene light that once 
more kindles on the horizon of the old or- 
ganization. It is towards this light that the 
young and hopeful are slowly turning their 
expectant faces. 

Shall their longing be in vain ? For still 
the question remains ; Is this revival to be 
a permanent one ? Or is it all but the final 
struggle that betokens death and foretells 
dissolution ? Let us venture no prophecy. 
Great hearts, strong minds, pure souls, and 
earnest wills are devotedly taking up the 
work, and manifold blessings will as- 
suredly attend its prosecution. Should this 
Society regain its prestige, and reach 



152 The Hicksite Quakers. 

out its wisely helping hand of simple 
faith to the multitude through a vigorous 
propaganda, there can be no doubt that 
it will be a means of grace to thousands 
of hungry, waiting souls, who are neither 
scoffers, infidels nor atheists, but who can- 
not accept the creeds of the Churches in 
sincerity. Many communities would find 
its simple forms better suited to their wants 
and their resources, than the more elabo- 
rate, more beautiful and more costly forms 
of other denominations. Yet as they adopt 
new instrumentalities they will gradually ap- 
proach the other churches and do work simi- 
lar to theirs. Still there is work enough to 
be done in redeeming humanity from vice 
and sin to employ every agency for good, 
and no body of Christ's followers has pre- 
empted any portion of the blessed work. 
The Neo-Quakerism will find the harvest 
ready and waiting for the reapers. Will it 
rise in God's conquering might, to do its 
work ? Time alone can tell. Should it hear 
the Voice, heed its monitions, gird on its 



The Hicksite Quakers. 1 53 

spiritual armor and go forth in its power, no 
one will rejoice more sincerely than he who 
has labored so earnestly to state its character 
and its faith in this little book, — a labor of 
the heart, — a work of love and tender rem- 
iniscences. For to him as to them the In- 
ner Light of Consciousness is the test of 
truth, — the Immediate Communion of the 
human soul with its Divine Creator and 
Savior is the one fundamental fact of relig- 
ion, of worship, and of life itself. Upon 
that foundation, whatever is built in love 
and prayer, must prevail for blessed ends. 
Whether such ends involve the rejuve- 
nation and perpetuity of the Society of 
Hicksite Friends, its baptism for a new 
work, its rehabilitation in the plenitude of 
power, and still retaining its cardinal tenets, 
or its gradual but inevitable mergence into 
some more pliant and more comprehensive 
organization which shall inherit its leaven- 
ing principles and more effectually do its 
work, must remain, for the present, among 
the mysteries of Inscrutable Wisdom. The 



i$4 Th e Hicksite Quakers. 

light of an apparent dawn is along the hori- 
zon, — let us prayerfully watch if perchance 
it be the herald of the coming day, the pre- 
cursor of the glory of the ever-living Son 
of God. 

" Hail, Gracious Light, the Spirit's day ; 
Pure effluence of celestial ray ; 
First offspring of creative morn, 
At God's omniscient fiat born." 




[The following poem, by the Author of this book, is in- 
dicative of the Quaker belief in the " Voice Within," or 
the "Inner Light," and is appended to this chapter with- 
out further comment] 



THE VOICE. 
" And I heard a Voice front heaven." 

Canst thou not hear, Oh doubting Soul, 
As fierce, wild billows o'er thee roll 

From life's rough sea, 
The Voice that pleads within thy heart, 
And fain would peace and love impart, 

God's peace for thee ? 

A still, small Voice, whose accents clear 
Only the listening soul can hear, 

In reverence bent ; 
A spirit Voice, that hath no sound, 
Yet moves the human heart profound, 

With love intent. 
155 



156 The Voice. 

It comes not in the tempest's roar, 
That sweeps with desolation o'er 

Thy troubled path ; 
But softer Voice than mother mild 
E'er whispered to her darling child, 

Our Father hath. 



When hushed in holiest reverence, thou 
Dost low in adoration bow, 

And wait His time ; 
Then in thy silence shall His word 
Sweep o'er the heart's responsive chord, 

In strains sublime. 



And thou shalt know the Voice that gives 
Peace to the soul of him that lives 

By its behest ; 
Thou knowest not whence it came, nor where 
It vanished on the throbbing air, 

But thou art blest. 



A peace serene shall dwell with thee, 
And often, as on bended knee 

Thou pray est alone, 
The Spirit of the living God 
Shall make thy heart His own abode, 

His glorious throne. 



The Voice. 757 

And thou, with heavenly Presence blest, 
Upon the Eternal Heart shall rest, 

And rest for aye ; 
That peace shall be thy spirit's dower, 
Thy life's consummate, holy flower, 

Its radiant day. 



From this communion shalt thou rise 
To cleave the splendor of the skies, 

And there behold 
The Beatific Vision, won 
By spirits that have freely gone 

Where God's Voice called. 



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